INTRODUCTION: This still-unpublished monograph chapter is intended
as a supplement to course lectures about Andean herding and
agricultural ecology. The chapter itself is still incomplete, a work
in progress, and should not be thought of as definitive.

MODELING CENTRAL ANDEAN AGRICULTURE AND HERDING

This chapter seeks to provide a conceptual framework for the
interpretation of the archaeological data to be presented in Chapter
6. A few aspects of this effort were anticipated in Chapter 2. We
rely primarily on ethnographic and ethnohistoric studies from the
southern half of the Central Andean highlands. We are not searching
for highly specific analogs between historic and prehispanic herding
and agriculture. Our purpose is to highlight general patterns of
production, zonal complementarity, and resource redistribution
inherent for preindustrial agricultural and pastoral economies set in
a natural and cultural matrix that poses a finite range of
constraints and offers a finite range of possibilities. We assume
that historic patterns of agriculture and herding have direct links,
however uncertain, to those of the prehispanic past.

Because economy and polity are so closely inter-related, we begin
this chapter with a general overview of our current understanding of
prehispanic Central Andean cultural development. This should help
provide a basis for understanding which aspects of the
historic-period patterns are most pertinent to the interpretation of
our own archaeological data. Because our fieldwork contributes
nothing to the Archaic period, we extend our view back only as far as
the beginning of the Formative era (ca. 2000 B.C., Table 5.02).
Because archaeological knowledge of the ceja de montaña and
montaña zones remains limited, we will not discuss the
prehistory of these regions.

A Synopsis of Prehispanic Cultural Development

Both agriculture and camelid herding were fully established in
much of the Central Andes by the beginning of Formative times
(Pearsall 1992; Wing and Wheeler 1988). The Junín puna was an
early center of camelid domestication, while remains of the full
spectrum of Andean cultigens have been found in Late Archaic and
Early Formative archaeological deposits in several kichwa valleys

Early and Middle Formative Chiefdoms (Initial Period and Early
Horizon)

Prior to the end of the third millennium B.C. there is little
indication of hierarchical organization anywhere in the Central
Andes. The most complex South American societies of the third
millennium B.C. were concentrated in the far northwest, between
Panama and Ecuador (Damp 1984; DeBoer 1996; Holm 1987; Lathrap and
Marcos 1977; Meggers et al. 1965; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1965, 1985;
Schwartz and Raymond 1996; Zeidler 1991). By ca. 2000 B.C. there is
clear evidence in several parts of Peru for public architecture; for
increases in the size and density of sedentary population; for the
intensification of agriculture and herding; and for the
intensification and expansion of inter-regional exchange of both
materials and information (e.g., Fung 1969, 1988; Grieder et al.
1988; Matsuza 1978; Moseley and Willey 1973; S. Pozorski and T.
Pozorski 1979; Quilter 1985).

By later Early Formative times (ca. 1500-900 B.C.) the central and
northern Peruvian coasts had emerged as the cores of a cultural
florescence that included formal public architecture and an
impressive development of formal ritual iconography (e.g., Burger
1992; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1991; Donnan 1985; Patterson 1985; S.
Pozorski and T. Pozorski 1986, 1987, 1988, 1992; T. Pozorski 1975; T.
Pozorski and S. Pozorski 1995; Ravines and Isbell 1975; Rossello
1997). Some adjacent highland kichwa valleys participated in this
florescence (e.g., Burger 1992; Fung 1975; Izumi et al. 1972; Izumi
and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Kaulike 1975, 1976; Onuki 1985;
Rosas and Shady 1970, 1974; Shady 1992), but many others did not, and
the entire southern half of the Central Andes -- both coastal and
highland sectors -- remained a developmental backwater until the
Middle Formative in the first millennium B.C..

We view these Early Formative developments as the formation of
chiefdom polities, rooted in Late Archaic Big Man systems that may
have flourished most notably in the larger coastal valley deltas of
central and northern Peru. Inter-zonal exchange, across the full
ecological spectrum from Pacific coast through the highlands and into
the upper Amazon Basin, is attested by the occurrences of small
quantities of exotic marine, sierra, and montaña materials in
several archaeological sites (e.g., [citations], maybe Burger
1992, with specific page nos.; maybe Matos on Ancon). Such exchanges,
in the context of prestige-building activities carried out by
competitive Big Men and Chiefs, may have initially introduced
cultigens and agriculture into the Pacific coastal valleys. It is for
this same time that Pearsall (1980a, 1980b) reports evidence from
archaeological sites in the Junín puna for an intensification
of puna-kichwa plant exchange; comparable intensification is seen to
be underway at several other excavated highland sites (e.g., Lynch
1980; MacNeish 1979, 1981).

By the beginning of the first millennium B.C. the pace of these
developments had accelerated throughout central and northern Peru,
and had got underway as well farther south. The Chavin stylistic
complex that spread selectively throughout much of northern Peru is
one example (e.g., Burger 1988, 1992; Lumbreras 1971), and the first
presence of substantial sedentary settlements in a well-defined
site-size hierarchy in the Titicaca Basin is another
(Albarracin-Jordan 1996; Hastorf (ed.) 1998; Mathews 1995; McAndrews
et al. 1997; Stanish et al. 1997). Settlement pattern studies on the
Peruvian north coast (Feldman 1983; Willey 1953; Wilson 1988, 1995)
reveal the construction of impressive complexes of monumental public
buildings, the use of formal ritual iconography, and the development
of canal irrigation and significant population growth -- although
such agricultural intensification and population growth were still
modest by the standards of subsequent centuries.

The trends toward growing cultural complexity that had been set in
motion during the antecedent Early Formative accelerated and expanded
during the Middle Formative. Just as impressive is the apparent
absence of such development in many places, such as our own survey
area. There are many other regions where Early and Middle Formative
occupation is known to be absent or very modest (e.g., Meddens 1984,
1991; Schjellerup 1997; Schreiber 1987; Stanish 1992; Valdez and
Vivanco 1994).

The underlying causes of this Middle Formative variability remain
unclear. Florescent developments appear to have occurred either in
areas that are unusually productive in terms of Formative agriculture
(e.g., several larger coastal valleys with permanent rivers and
large, irrigable floodplains), or where there is an unusual potential
for the direct combination of highly productive agriculture and
highly productive herding (e.g., the circum-lakeshore region of the
Titicaca Basin). Miller and Burger (1995) have found an increased
importance of camelid meat in the diet of Middle Formative kichwa
agriculturalists in north-central Peru -- suggestive of intensified
interaction between puna herders and kichwa cultivators.

The Early and Middle Formative florescence in northern Peru and
southern Ecuador occurs where the spacing between coast, sierra, and
montaña zones is narrowest, and where the intervening mountain
passes are lowest. Such settings may have been the best places for
inter-zonal interaction between chiefly elites seeking
prestige-building "foreign" exotica, but mainly dependent for their
access to such exotica upon spatially restricted, kin-based networks.
The Middle Formative inhabitants of the Tarama-Chinchaycocha Region
were apparently only modestly involved in such inter-zonal networking
(e.g., Matos 1971).

Small States during the Late Formative/Early Intermediate
Period.

Late in the first millennium B.C. there is archaeological evidence
that more complex polities were developing. These developments are
most clearly apparent for the Mochica culture on the Peruvian north
coast (e.g., Brennan 1980; Donnan 1976; Hocquenghem 1987; Shimada
1994; Uceda and Mujica 1994; Wilson 1983, 1987, 1988, 1995), for the
Lima culture on the Peruvian central coast (e.g., Earle 1972), for
the Nasca culture on the Peruvian south-central coast (e.g.,
Silverman 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1996), for the early stages of Wari's
development in the Peruvian south-central highlands (Isbell 1985,
1987; Lumbreras 1974b), and for the early stages of Tiwanaku's
development in the Titicaca Basin (Albarracin-Jordan 1996;
Albarracin-Jordan and Mathews 1990; Berman 1994; K. Chavez 1988; S.
Chavez 1988; Kolata 1993; Stanish et al. 1997).

All these developments were characterized by substantial
population growth, impressive monumental public architecture, signs
of agricultural intensification, and formal ritual iconography. There
is a clear and pervasive stylistic linkage between decorative motifs
and vessel forms employed in coastal Nasca and highland Wari ceramics
(Knobloch 1991; Menzel 1964; Paulson 1983; Silverman 1988b). This
hints at new forms of coastal-highland interaction in south-central
Peru that may have included inter-zonal exchange based on something
(e.g., tribute) other than seeking out of "foreign" exotica through
networks of kin-based reciprocity for purposes of chiefly
prestige-building (Spencer [1982] develops an analogous
hypothesis for the early development of the Monte Alban state in
southern Mexico). The growing importance of domestic camelid meat in
the diet of north-coastal Mochica populations may be another sign of
new forms of coast-highland interaction (S. Pozorski 1979).

Just as in the antecedent Early and Middle Formative, these Late
Formative/EIP developments were distinctly uneven over space.
Peruvian coastal valleys south of Nasca remained sparsely occupied,
without major sites or monumental public architecture, as did many
highland valleys and virtually all the puna except for the
circum-lake portion of the Titicaca Basin. Just as in the Early and
Middle Formative, coastal polities appear to have been notably more
complex than their highland contemporaries in terms of the
monumentality of their public architecture, the size of their
settlements and regional populations, and overall agricultural
productivity founded in increasingly large-scale canal irrigation
(e.g., Brennan 1980; Moseley and Deeds 1982). With the possible
exception of the Nasca-Wari linkage noted above, the influence of
most of these coastal EIP states apparently did not extend
significantly outside their coastal heartlands (e.g., Dillehay 1976,
1979; Schadel 1985; J. Topic and T. Topic 1983).

Archaeologists are not yet in a position to resolve the question
of why some areas were in the "mainstream" of earliest Andean state
development while others were not. The difficulties are compounded by
the fact that the EIP is approximately 1000 years long -- a great
span of time that cannot always be subdivided into chronological
phases short enough to perceive key developmental processes.
Additional problems arise in terms of conceptualizing such overall
variability: e.g., if states developed in some areas and not in
others, how were changes in the developmentally peripheral areas
affected by the presence of new forms of political and economic
organization in the core regions? These issues have begun to be
addressed in central (Dillehay 1976, 1979) and northern Peru (e.g.,
Onuki 1985; Schadel 1985; Shimada 1985; T. Topic and T. Topic 1983),
but the archaeological data are simply not yet up to the task of
providing good answers.

Large States in the Middle Horizon.

The predominance of the larger Peruvian coastal valleys as the
main foci of Andean chiefdom and state development ended definitively
during the Middle Horizon. It was then that two highland centers,
Wari and Tiwanaku, emerged as the focal points of large polities that
extended their influence across major coastal and highland zones in
ways that earlier, coastal-centered states apparently had not.
Marcahuamachuco in the Peruvian north highlands was another major MH
center, whose regional influence is still less well understood than
either Wari's or Tiwanaku's (J. Topic and T. Topic 1986; T. Topic and
J. Topic 1987). The now-prevailing view is that during the Middle
Horizon Wari and Tiwanaku were centers of proto-imperial polities
whose expansive character and hierarchical organization foreshadowed
the better-known Inka (e.g., Browman 1985; Feldman 1989; Goldstein
1987; Isbell and Mcewan 1991; Kolata 1993; Moseley et al. 1991;
Raymond 1992; Schreiber 1987).

These scholars, and others, have marshaled much evidence in
support of the proto-imperial model. This includes the widespread
distribution of distinctive ceramic and architectural styles: e.g.,
the Wari-like architectonic configurations in far-flung highland
sites like Pikillaqta in the south (Mcewan 1987, 1989, 1991, 1996;
Sanders 1973), Jincamocco in the south-central region (Schreiber
1992), and Viracochapampa in the far north (J. Topic 1991; T. Topic
1991) ([ref. to map showing these sites]). Several other
sites (e.g., Wari Willka in the Mantaro Valley near Huancayo
[Matos 1968; Shea 1969] and Honcopampa in Peru's
north-central highlands [Isbell 1989]) also have strong
ceramic and architectural linkages to Wari, suggestive of different
forms of "influence" that might include the expansion of religious
ideology (Keatinge 1981). In other cases, far-flung Wari contact is
expressed primarily in the form of decorated ceramics (e.g., Thatcher
1974, 1977; Topic and Topic 1986).

Shady (1988, 1989) has challenged this proto-imperial model,
arguing that Wari (and, by extension, Tiwanaku as well) was but one
important component in the context of numerous large, interactive
Middle Horizon state polities. Shady's position is appealing in light
of the substantial Peruvian central- and north-coastal Middle Horizon
polities that appear to have developed and flourished in the absence
of any significant influence from Wari (Bawden 1982, 1983; Shady
1982; Shimada 1978, 1981, 1985, 1994; Shimada and Cavallaro 1985;
Willey 1953; Wilson 1988). Further support of this view comes from
indications of the apparently autonomous development from local EIP
antecedents of the major Middle Horizon center at Marcahuamachuco, in
the Peruvian north highlands, with little or no direct ceramic or
architectural influence from Wari (J. Topic and T. Topic 1985).

The nature of the largest Middle Horizon states remains to be
adequately comprehended. Nevertheless, there seems little doubt that
there was a major difference between the smaller, spatially more
restricted EIP polities, on the one hand, and the larger, spatially
and ecologically more extended Middle Horizon systems, on the other.
For the first time the two largest regional centers -- Wari and
Tiwanaku -- were situated in the highlands of the southern half of
the Central Andes, a region that had previously been distinctly
secondary in pan-Andean developmental terms.

From this point onward in time, the north Peruvian highlands, a
region that had seen the development of some major Formative and EIP
centers, was increasingly secondary in terms of the growth and
expansion of the largest polities -- the latter were invariably
centered farther south, in or near the heartland of Central Andean
camelid pastoralism. Domestic camelids existed in the Peruvian north
highlands, and even into Ecuador (Norton and Stahl 1987; Stahl 1988),
but this northern region has always been peripheral to the core zone
of Central Andean camelid pastoralism in the central and southern
highlands (Troll 1958, 1968).

A glance at Figure 2.02 reveals that both Wari (the largest known
Middle Horizon center in Peru) and Cuzco (the Inka capital during the
Late Horizon) are at the junctures of major herding and agricultural
zones. This suggests that the integration of large-scale agricultural
and herding economies lay at the foundation of both centers'
dominance. As noted above, Tiwanaku's location is uniquely strategic
in terms of the close proximity of unusually productive lakeshore
agriculture and camelid herding; there is also easy accessibility to
ecologically complementary zones to the west and east of the Titicaca
Basin, in a setting where regional socio-economic integration would
have been facilitated by water-borne transportation and communication
(Parsons 1968).

During the Middle Horizon, for the first time in Andean
prehistory, the full integration of more specialized agricultural and
herding economies was apparently beginning to be important in some
particularly favored and strategic highland regions of central and
southern Peru. Arguably, only these regions would have been capable
of attaining the higher levels of overall productivity necessary for
underwriting the costs of increased socio-political
centralization.

From the Middle Horizon onward, coastal polities appear to have
become increasingly peripheral to the "mainstream" of Central Andean
socio-political development. This may be another indication of the
growing importance of fully integrated specialized agricultural and
herding economies. Some level of local camelid breeding and herding
may have developed in later prehispanic periods on the Peruvian
coasts (e.g., Shimada and Shimada 1985). However, the coastal valleys
have always been peripheral to camelid pastoralism simply because of
environmental factors -- e.g., harmful bacteria thrive in the warm
climate, and coastal vegetation does not include the plants necessary
for proper camelid diet.

The Middle Horizon was clearly a time of radical cultural change.
We still understand little of what this change actually entailed or
of how it was achieved. There may have been significant ideological
changes accompanying the implementation of new forms of
socio-political hierarchy, new forms of surplus generation and
tribute extraction, and new forms of supra-household and
supra-community and inter-regional interaction. Hints of such change
include the widespread distribution of Wari- and Tiwanaku-linked
architectural and ceramic forms that may have been associated with
public ritual, analogous perhaps to the Inka emphasis on ritual
feasting in their provincial centers (e.g., Morris 1982).
Archaeological evidence for ritual feasting at administrative centers
occurs at least as early as late EIP times in Peru's north-central
highlands (Gero 1986, 1990).

J. Topic and T. Topic (1986) and T. Topic (1991) have suggested
that Marcahuamachuco in Peru's north highlands became a major
regional center during the Middle Horizon because of its new role in
mediating coast-highland exchanges and interaction at a time of
increased regional and inter-regional tensions. The radical
architectonic innovations at Marcahuamachuco may reflect new forms of
ritual and settlement pattern associated with changing forms of
inter-regional linkage. There is a definite Wari "influence" in the
Marcahuamachuco region, but this appears to be more related to
considerations of local prestige building than of Wari dominance. The
Topics' model may have some applicability as well to the changed
roles of Wari and Tiwanaku as these larger centers emerged as new
regional and inter-regional centers during the Middle Horizon. As
noted earlier, Wari probably began to be important as a node in
sierra-coastal interaction during the later EIP.

We have noted that distinctly Wari-related architecture and
ceramics are not found everywhere, even in some areas relatively
close to Wari itself. Furthermore, much of the existing
archaeological evidence for Wari influence comes from excavated data,
that our surface survey cannot provide. We must thus be prepared to
think about other potential archaeological indicators (e.g., shifts
in regional settlement patterns) that have only seldom been
considered by others in highland contexts (Albarracin-Jordan 1996;
Schreiber 1987; Stanish et al. 1997).

State Collapse and Rebuilding during the Late Intermediate
Period.

This period is usually seen as a time of socio-political
instability, de-centralization, and intense warfare in the aftermath
of the collapse of the large Middle Horizon polities centered at Wari
and Tiwanaku (e.g., Parsons and Hastings 1988). The causes and
processes of this collapse remain obscure, although scenarios
emphasizing military conflict have been proposed (e.g., Amat 1978).
The main known exception to this pattern of center collapse and
regional instability is the expansive LIP Chimu polity centered at
Chan Chan on the north Peruvian coast (e.g., Moseley and Day 1982;
Moseley and Cordy-Collins 1990; Rowe 1948).

Somewhat surprisingly, several regional surveys on Peru's north
coast (Keatinge 1982; Willey 1953; Wilson 1988, 1995) have revealed a
consistent pattern of population decline after the Middle Horizon. On
the other hand, less systematic reconnaissance in the far north
coastal Lambayeque region (Shimada 1981) suggests substantial LIP
population growth. Highland surveys (Albarracin-Jordan 1996;
Albaracin-Jordan and Mathews 1990; Earle et al. 1980; D. Julien 1994;
Krzanowski 1985; Meddens 1984; Parsons and Hastings 1977; Stanish et
al. 1997; Valdez and Vivanco 1994) consistently indicate that the LIP
was a period of significant population growth in the sierra.

[check w/Brian Bauer re Cuzco LIP patterns]

Perhaps more than for any other period in Central Andean
prehistory, the LIP is a time for which archaeologists have their
greatest difficulty in conceptualizing socio-political forms. By the
beginning of the LIP at ca. A.D. 1000, state polities had existed for
approximately a millennium. There were probably few areas between
western Bolivia and southern Ecuador that had not been significantly
affected by state polities in varying stages of development,
florescence, or collapse. How do we comprehend the societies that
remained in the wake of the collapse of large states following a
millennium-long period of state presence? Such discombobulated
systems may no longer be centralized states, but the standard
"chiefdom" model -- with its emphasis on kinship-based authority,
generalized administration, and limited secular power -- also seems
inadequate, although some highland LIP polities have been labeled as
chiefdoms (e.g., Costin 1986; D'Altroy 1992; Earle et al. 1980, 1987;
Hastorf 1993; Hastorf et al. 1989).

The complicated and confusing socio-political landscape of
nineteenth century West Africa (e.g., Forde and Kaberry 1967) may
offer a better analogy, with its ever-shifting alignments and
re-alignments of agriculturalists, herders, artisans, traders,
war-lords, and powerful outsiders seeking to extend and consolidate
their influence from relatively stable core regions to unstable
peripheries and interstitial zones where they found themselves in
competition with other forces structurally comparable to themselves.
This West African scene, like highland Peru during the LIP, defies
easy typological classification, but it is probably generally
comparable to what archaeologists must deal with in the Central Andes
during the three or four centuries after ca. A.D. 1000.

Although the early stages of the development of the imperial Inka
capital at Cuzco remain unclear, there are now good indications that
the Cuzco Region was precocious in terms of population growth and
settlement nucleation during the LIP (Bauer 1991, 1992b; Dwyer 1971;
Kendall 1976; Parsons and Hastings 1988). Furthermore, a recent
synthesis of several dozen radiocarbon dates (D'Altroy, Williams, and
Bauer 1998) suggests that some far-flung Inka-related developments,
previously regarded as chronologically Late Horizon, are actually of
Late Intermediate Period age.

The LIP was clearly a time of significant change. Part of this
change may have been related to the fracturing of long-established
regional and inter-regional linkages following the collapse of Wari
and Tiwanaku (and perhaps of other major centers as well) at the end
of the Middle Horizon. The development of new organizational forms
that grew out of these fractured networks ultimately gave rise to the
Inka empire centered at Cuzco. Earle et al. (1980, 1987) have
demonstrated major organizational differences between earlier and
later phases of the LIP in the Wanka Region in Peru's central
highlands; such a developmental dichotomy was probably widespread.
The all-too-common difficulty of being unable to subdivide the
400-year long LIP often precludes us from defining the processes of
change within this period.

The fact that the Late Horizon pan-Andean imperial capital emerged
at Cuzco, situated at the juncture of major kichwa and puna zones,
and not at Chan Chan or elsewhere in the Chimu domain on the far
Peruvian north coast, suggests that the integration of agriculture
and camelid herding continued to play a key developmental role during
the LIP. The apparent failure of the coastal Chimu polity to expand
significantly into the adjacent north Peruvian highlands suggests
that major LIP coastal polities continued to be economically based on
large-scale canal irrigation -- an adaptation that apparently did not
prove to be fully "competitive" in terms of Late Horizon pan-Andean
geo-politics.

Nevertheless, we now know that there was considerable variation
within the empire in terms of local administration and linkage to
Cuzco (e.g., Barcena 1992; Berberián 1991; D'Altroy 1992;
Gonzales 1983; Hayashida 1995; D. Julien 1994; Levine 1985, 1982;
Lorandi 1983; Lorandi and Cremonte 1991; Mallpass (ed.) 1993; Morris
and Thompson 1985; Niemeyer 1986; Niemeyer and Rivera 1983; Plaza
1976; Raffino 1982, 1993; Salomon 1986a, 1986b, 1987; Schjellerup
1984; Stehberg 1992; Williams 1994; Williams and Lorandi 1986). The
empire is now seen as far less monolithic than was formerly believed,
and there is a growing awareness that the Inka imperial effort
(including the organization of labor for agriculture, herding, craft
production, and infrastructure maintenance) was constrained and
shaped by the varied character of local polity, economy, and
population size and density. Although Inka "conquest" could produce
major transformations of local settlement and production (e.g.,
Hastorf 1990; Hastorf and Johannessen 1993), in other cases there
appear to have been strong continuities with the pre-Inka past,
especially in terms of the operation of local-level (as opposed to
imperial-level) economies (e.g., Conrad 1977; Menzel 1959; Parsons
1998).

The Legacies of Historic Colonialism and Capitalism

In Chapter 2 we outlined the specific impacts of historic-period
transformations in the Peruvian central highlands. These included the
disastrous population declines resulting from the deadly combination
of introduced diseases and onerous forced labor in mines and textile
workshops during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the
later sixteenth century Spanish policies of encomienda (Indian labor
service to Spanish and Creole landlords) and reducción
(population resettlement) had begun to be fully implemented,
resulting in the abandonment of many older settlements and the
formation of new villages and towns modeled on Spanish concepts of
urban planning.

This was paralleled by a strong dedication on the part of Spanish
authorities to the extirpation of indigenous religious ideology. By
the time of independence from Spain in the 1820s, the impact of world
systems capitalism began to be strongly felt in highland Peru,
especially in mining and wool production. Remaining communally
controlled resources, including agricultural lands and pastures, were
increasingly alienated from indigenous people, many of whom became
landless peasants and laborers. Even Indians who retained some
control over productive resources became increasingly involved in the
production of wool (both sheep and alpaca) and foodstuffs for sale in
local or regional commercial markets, including those in new mining
centers.

Summary and Conclusions

Our overview of some 4000 years of Central Andean cultural
development indicates six main developmental stages:

(1) The growth of simple chiefdoms during the Early Formative (ca.
2000-900 B.C.), with florescent developments in the deltas of major
valleys along Peru's central and northern coasts.

(2) The appearance of larger, more complex chiefdoms during the
Middle Formative (ca. 900-400 B.C.). Although the lower valleys of
Peru's central and north coasts remained at the core of this
development, some parts of the adjacent highlands also participated,
and similar societies began to develop in the unusually productive
and strategically situated Titicaca Basin in the southern highlands.
This development was characterized by the construction of formal
public buildings, formal ritual iconography, population growth and
agricultural intensification through canal irrigation in the coastal
valleys. Inter-zonal and inter-regional exchange expanded and
intensified. Some coastal and highland areas remained peripheral,
particularly in the southern half of the Central Andes.

(3) The appearance of small states during the Late Formative/Early
Intermediate Period (ca. 400 B.C.-A.D. 600). The best known and most
florescent of these polities (Mochica, Lima, and Nasca) were centered
in the major valleys of Peru's northern, central, and south-central
coasts, and in the Titicaca Basin. Nonetheless, some highland areas
in central and northern Peru also witnessed more rapid change,
particularly in the Wari region of the south-central highlands where
a strong stylistic linkage with decorated coastal Nasca ceramics may
indicate new forms of inter-zonal interaction. The coastal state
heartlands witnessed rapid population growth and a major expansion of
canal irrigation systems. The first presence of state-like polities
in highland settings (Wari and Tiwanaku) may indicate the beginning
of new forms of interaction between more specialized herding and
agricultural groups.

(4) The development of large, expansive states during the Middle
Horizon (ca. A.D. 600-1000), with the largest regional centers (Wari
and Tiwanaku) situated in the southern half of the Central Andean
highlands. From this point on northern Peru became increasingly
secondary -- even the LIP north-coastal Chimu polity had only modest
impact in the adjacent sierra. These geo-political shifts suggest the
full integration of more specialized puna herding and kichwa
agricultural economies, and the emergence of strategic highland
regions as the loci of dominant states or proto-imperial systems. It
is during the Middle Horizon when we might expect to find the first
effective mechanisms for maintaining order and security that did not
depend on kin-based alliances.

(5) An era of state collapse and rebuilding, comprising the Late
Intermediate Period and the Late Horizon (ca. A.D. 1000-1532),
culminating in the Inka empire. Inka state building was deeply rooted
in the LIP, and archaeologists are just beginning to understand more
about this development. The Inka empire itself is now seen as
internally varied, with imperial administration and organization of
production constrained by the highly varied nature of local
population, polity, and economy. The location of the Inka capital,
Cuzco, at the kichwa-puna juncture indicates the continued importance
of fully integrated, large-scale agricultural and herding
economies.

(6) The massive transformation of the Colonial and Modern periods
after A.D. 1532 in which involuntary labor obligations and
resettlement were compounded by the great loss of native population
resulting from introduced diseases and overwork. The impact of
capitalistic world systems after the early nineteenth century
produced further dislocations of indigenous people from resources as
new forms of land tenure and commercialized production of mineral
ores, foodstuffs, and wool became dominant.

The Cultural Ecology of Historic Central Andean Herders and
Cultivators

We are interested in the links between pastoral and agricultural
economies. We particularly want to discern the expectable
relationships between the size, composition, location, and boundary
definition of interactive units of herders and cultivators. Most of
the relevant ethnographic and ethnohistoric studies have been carried
out in places where the impact of modern Peruvian and Bolivian states
is generally limited, and where local production is not strongly
integrated into the commercial economy. Consequently, these studies
may be most applicable to prehispanic contexts where strong
centralized organization was weak or absent. Our discussion may thus
be least applicable to the Late Horizon, when our study area appears
to have been fully incorporated into the Inka empire, and perhaps
also to the Middle Horizon, when Wari may have exercised some degree
of supra-regional control or hegemony.

Nevertheless, virtually all of these historic-period studies
derive from contexts where both a state and an over-arching
commercial economy do exist, however weak or under-developed. State
institutions and commercial markets do have some significant impact
on the behavior of individuals, even in more remote communities:
children often attend state schools; births, marriages, and deaths
are registered by bureaucrats employed by municipal, departmental, or
national agencies to whom taxes (including military service) are
sometimes paid; laws prohibiting theft and violence and other
state-defined transgressions are typically well known and sometimes
enforced by outside authorities; outside buyers often purchase crops,
wool, and handicrafts; access to land is usually structured by
externally imposed rules concerned with ownership and transference of
property; money minted and printed by the state circulates, and every
household needs some cash to purchase a few necessities;
opportunities for wage employment lure young people away to work in
distant places; most rural Indians find themselves in the lowest
stratum of an imposed socio-economic hierarchy that severely
constrains upward mobility; and many local officials are partly
empowered and legitimized through their roles as functionaries at the
bottom rungs of state-imposed administrative structures. In most
cases these external forces have been in play for centuries.

I.e., the ethnographic and historic data we look to for guidance
do not come from tribal or chiefdom societies where supra-household
behavior is structured in large part by competitive prestige-building
activities of Big Men and Chiefs operating within localized networks
of shifting kinship alliances. Kinship alliances do exist in the
historic period, of course, as do non-commercial production and
redistribution, and sometimes these are locally of primary
importance. However, any attempt to understand historic-period
cultural ecology at the local level must remember that individuals,
households, settlements, and communities are not un-modified remnants
of prehispanic societies, nor do they behave according to purely
local, or even purely regional, constraints and possibilities. From
this perspective, our insights from historic-period data are probably
least applicable to the Early and Middle Formative, a time before the
existence of state organization anywhere in the Central Andes.

Since the later sixteenth century, cattle and sheep have
increasingly replaced domestic camelids in much of the Central Andes,
including the Titicaca Basin and some of the most desirable pastures
in southern Peru, particularly at elevations below 4000 m asl (Flores
1980). Similarly, Orlove (1977a) has noted the major increase of
commercialized sheep and alpaca production over the past 150 years --
with llamas relegated to a secondary role in most places. In some
cases, such herd expansion has encroached upon prime agricultural
lands. Even in remote valleys in Peru's southern highlands the sale
for cash of alpaca wool is sometimes the dominant factor determining
local settlement patterning (Webster 1971, 1973).

As we noted in Chapter 2, these changes have accompanied the
general reduction of local community access to the most productive
agricultural and herding lands in the face of expanding private
land-holdings by Spanish, creole, mestizo, and foreign elites seeking
to generate wealth from certain types of agriculture and from wool
and mining production. This process began in the later sixteenth
century as Spanish policies of resettlement and concentration
(reducción) of Indian populations got fully underway (Gade and
Escobar 1982; Molinié-Fioravanti 1986), and it accelerated
after independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century when
western industrial capitalism extended its reach into the Central
Andes (Orlove 1977a). This has had the effect of increasing
competition between local Indian communities over remaining fields
and pastures. Yamamoto (1981:95), for example, describes the periodic
ritualized checking and marking of community territorial borders --
occasions that sometimes produce violent confrontations between
neighboring groups that accuse each other of land encroachment.

Because many of the best agricultural and herding lands have long
ago been overtaken by commercial operations of little relevance for
our needs, we lack good ethnographic analogies for the prehispanic
use of these most productive sectors of the Central Andean highland
economy.

Agro-pastoralists

The degree to which agriculture and herding are combined within
household and local community economies varies a great deal: some
herders practice no cultivation at all, while others are committed
about equally to both; in other cases herding is dominant while
cultivation is secondary; at the other end of the spectrum are
predominantly agricultural households with only a few domestic
animals.

Not surprisingly, people who live permanently above ca. 4200 m asl
do little or no cultivation, especially if they live relatively far
away (more than a few hours travel) from productive agricultural
land. Households in the lower puna and upper kichwa are likely to
combine some mixture of herding and agriculture, particularly if they
are not too far away from both pasture and agricultural land of
reasonable quality.

Some modern households and communities in the lower puna may be
differentially involved in herding and agriculture because of
historic factors. For example, in their discussion of the settlement
nucleation caused by colonial reducción policies, Gade and
Escobar (1983:438) note that "mindful that pastoralism would
undermine the efforts to control and acculturate the natives, the
early colonial administrators tried to ensure that farming would be
the primary mode of livelihood in the reducciones." Moreover, as had
been accomplished a few years earlier in colonial Mexico, the
sixteenth century Spaniards in Peru wanted to monopolize commercial
livestock production, and so Indian villagers were further
discouraged from the pursuit of herding divorced from agriculture.
Although many reducción villages had begun to break apart by
the end of colonial rule, nevertheless some degree of modern
agro-pastoralism may be a legacy of these colonial policies.

Gade and Escobar (1982:441-442) estimate that in the Peruvian
southern highlands a typical nuclear-family agro-pastoral household,
about equally dependent on both agriculture and herding and working
with simple hand technology, can cultivate a maximum of approximately
six hectares of land (a considerable portion of which is fallow at
any given time) while maintaining a mixed flock of approximately 25
sheep, 4 llamas, 3 cows, and a horse; actual numbers of animals and
size of cultivated plots vary widely. For inhabitants of the lower
puna who are primarily sheep-llama herders, but who also have a
secondary involvement in potato cultivation, Flannery et al.
(1989:104-105) find that household llama flocks of 25 animals are
about average, while flocks of 15 animals are considered "small," and
flocks of 35-40 animals are "excellent" (the numbers of sheep are
unspecified). [see if there is any comparable data on households
who are primarily agriculturalists but with secondary herding; also
check Goland).

Yamamoto (1985:91, 1988:144) makes the important point that where
agriculture and herding are combined today, the traditional
agro-pastoral economy is almost always based on camelids and tubers.
Cereal cultivation, especially in the case of maize, is much less
complementary with herding because of maize's needs for fertile soil,
warmer climate, and a labor intensity that conflicts overmuch with
herding activities.

A fairly typical situation for agro-pastoral communities in Peru's
central and southern highlands is described by Fonseca and Mayer
(1988). Individual households in each of these communities directly
control agricultural fields and pastures situated between 2000-4000 m
asl; these fields and pastures supply most of the plant and animal
products consumed by each household. At the same time, higher terrain
above 4000 m asl in the same general region is occupied by dispersed
hamlets of full-time herders, who themselves do no agriculture, and
who exchange their wool, textiles, dried meat, dung, and other animal
products for potatoes, maize, a variety of vegetables, coca, and
craft products produced or acquired by their agro-pastoral neighbors
at lower elevations (Mayer 1971).

Several writers (e.g., Camino 1980; Camino et al. 1981; Fujii and
Tomoeda 1981; McCorkle 1987; Orlove 1977b; Webster 1971, 1973; and
Yamamoto 1981, 1985) describe agro-pastoral societies in which a
community's major nucleated settlement is strategically placed at an
intermediate elevation (typically between 3100 and 3700 m asl), while
many people spend much of their time in smaller hamlets and camps at
higher and lower elevations (between 2500-4500 m asl) engaged in
different kinds of herding and agricultural tasks. At any given time,
segments of the entire community population (several hundred people
grouped in scores of households) can be found widely dispersed
throughout the entire community territory. In some cases the
centrally located major settlement is used only for occasional
residence by people cultivating crops in the vicinity or, on a few
occasions for a few days each year, by the entire community for major
ceremonies; each member household maintains its own house in the main
settlement. Murra (1972) describes a similar mid-sixteenth century
community system in the north-central highlands of Peru.

In another variant of modern Central Andean agro-pastoralism, most
members of a community spend virtually all their time at agricultural
tasks in their kichwa settlements, while a few households (or even
hired specialists) care full-time for all the community's flocks that
are herded together in neighboring puna pastures (e.g., Flores
1985:262; Fonseca and Mayer 1988; Guillet 1987).

More complex interactions between larger groups of
socio-economically integrated herders and agriculturalists are
described by Bastien (1978a, 1978b), Harris (1982, 1985), and Platt
(1982, 1986) in the highlands of western Bolivia. Here, specialized
kichwa agriculturalists and puna pastoralists reside in separate
settlements at different elevation zones between ca. 2500 m asl and
4500 m asl. These settlements are integrated within multi-settlement
"ethnic" or "ayllu" groupings whose territories extend over the full
elevation range. The distances between herder and agricultural
settlements are considerable, up to several dozen kilometers.
Complementary agricultural and herding products move between these
settlements through an intricate web of inter-household linkages.
These linkages are un-centralized, maintained through well defined
rules of zonal exogamy and ritual focused on inter-zonal
integration.

These examples illustrate the great diversity of modern
agro-pastoral adaptations in the Central Andes.

The Complementarity of Herding and Cultivating Economies

The degree to which agriculture and herding were combined or
separated in prehispanic times is a key question for archaeologists.
Because the Central Andes lies within tropical latitudes, ecological
zones succeed each other rapidly with change in elevation (Rhoades
and Thompson 1975). Unlike highland zones in temperate regions, there
is often little or no spatial separation between herding and
agricultural zones, and these zones often overlap and interdigitate.
Central Andean herders can use most pastures during the entire annual
cycle, unlike herders at temperate latitudes for whom many pastures
are seasonally unavailable because of cold or aridity (e.g, Barth
1961; Vincze 1980). Consequently, Central Andean herders typically
have much less need than their temperate-latitude counterparts for
long-distance transhumant or nomadic mobility (Inamura 1986).

As we have just noted, some local communities and even individual
households effectively combine herding and cultivation. Nevertheless,
spatial separation between more specialized herders, on the one hand,
and cultivators, on the other, is well documented. No camelid
pastoralists are known to be involved in the production of grain or
grass for their animals - unlike European pastoralists who must store
up fodder for the winter season (McCorkle 1987; Vincze 1980:392).

Access to both herding products and cultivated plants is essential
for highland populations (e.g., Flores 1979; Harris 1982, 1985;
Nachtigall 1975; Thomas 1976; Tomoeda 1985; Winterhalder and Thomas
1978; Yamamoto 1985). Without herding, the entire puna zone would
remain marginalized and peripheral. Without access to dependable
supplies of tubers and cereals produced in the kichwa, the diets of
most puna herders would remain calorically and nutritionally
incomplete (Table 4.01), especially for herders who do not consume
the milk or blood of their living animals (Yamamoto 1988:144).
Furthermore, puna herders have historically relied on kichwa-produced
maize for the chicha (maize beer) and maize-paste figurines commonly
used in their rituals (e.g., Tomoeda 1985:295; Yamamoto 1985:94).

soup made by boiling alpaca feet and lower legs in water
with toasted maize

kankachy

roast camelid or sheep meat

k'ispiño

ground kañiwa, water, lime, and salt -- molded
into cakes for use in trading expeditions

tostado

toasted wheat or maize flour

Conversely, without access to the wool, textiles, pack-animal
transport, meat, skins, and dung (for fertilizer and fuel) produced
in great quantities only by puna herders, kichwa cultivators would
have lacked adequate supplies of some of their most basic raw
materials for tools and clothing, and would have found their diets
much less varied and appealing. They would also have been hard
pressed to transport their harvested crops from field to storehouse,
or to move heavy loads of animal dung for fertilizer at planting
time. In the ritual realm, kichwa agriculturalists commonly make use
of aborted camelid fetuses and live animals as offerings and
sacrifices in ceremonies (Bastien 1978a:37).

The overall carrying capacity of the Central Andean highlands
increases in direct proportion to the degree to which kichwa
agriculture and puna herding are fully integrated and complementary.
Nevertheless, we should remember the findings of Mazess and Baker
(1964) who found that only 2.5-3.5 percent of the diet of an isolated
puna group in southern Peru consisted of food not produced above 4000
m asl. Similarly, Yamamoto (1985:94) notes that for one lower puna
community in southern Peru, potatoes comprise ca. 80 percent of the
diet.

Herding Ecology

The Central Andean puna provides large expanses of good pasture
but is only marginally suitable for plant cultivation (especially at
elevations above ca. 4200 m asl); conversely, large numbers of
camelids are rare in the intensively cultivated kichwa valleys below
ca. 3700 m asl (Troll 1958, 1968; Winterhalder and Thomas 1978).
Generally speaking, where puna and kichwa zones interdigitate closely
and local vertical relief is relatively high, there is a greater
tendency for herding and cultivating to be fully combined at the
household and local settlement levels (e.g., Brush 1976; Fujii and
Tomoeda 1981; Gade 1975; Inamura 1986; Orlove 1977b; Valle 1970;
Webster 1971, 1973; Yamamoto 1981, 1985). Such an ecological
configuration can occur anywhere, but it is most predominant in the
northern third of the Central Andean highlands (Figure 2.02) -- an
area where herding and agriculture may always have been integrated at
the local settlement level (McGreevy 1989).

Most reports of modern kichwa agriculturalists who also keep
domestic herbivores indicate that a high proportion of these animals
are introduced species -- donkeys, horses, cattle, goats, and
(possibly to a lesser extent) sheep (Custred 1977b:77). These species
may be more compatible with a relatively sedentary mode of life, and
perhaps less dependent than domestic camelids on puna plants for
their dietary needs -- i.e., they supplement, rather than complement,
agricultural production.

Where the puna and kichwa zones are separated by greater
distances, and where local vertical relief is relatively low, herders
in the puna and cultivators in the kichwa are more likely to be
specialized and separated (e.g., Browman 1974; Flannery et al. 1989;
Flores 1979; Fuji and Tomoeda 1981; Harris 1985; Platt 1982; Yamamoto
1985). Such ecological configurations are most predominant in
southern Peru and adjacent Bolivia (Figure 2.02). Such specialization
does not have to be complete. For example, some herders in the lower
puna may devote most of their attention to caring for their animals,
but also raise some hardy varieties of bitter potatoes as a secondary
supplement to their household economy (e.g., Flannery et al.
1989:50-51). Part of this zonal specialization has to do with the
high labor demands of agricultural and herding tasks that often
conflict with each other in terms of both scheduling and the adequacy
of local labor pools (McCorkle 1987).

Of special interest to us is the degree to which inhabitants of
the lower puna and upper kichwa combine herding and agriculture and
function as intermediaries between more fully specialized herders in
the upper puna and more fully specialized agriculturalists in the
lower kichwa (e.g., Flores 1985; Inamura 1981, 1986; Tomoeda
1985).

Caring for Llamas vs. Alpacas. Recent ecological, skeletal, fiber,
and DNA studies indicate that the two species of modern domestic
camelids (llamas and alpacas) are descended from two similar species
of prehispanic animals (Stanley et al. 1992; Wheeler 1995; Wheeler et
al. 1995). These studies suggest that the modern domestic camelids
are the products of centuries of hybridization between llamas and
alpacas in the face of the post-contact breakdown of the more
exacting breeding practices that had existed in late prehispanic
times.

Today alpacas are often much more numerous than llamas. This is
because alpaca wool has such high commercial value, while coarser
llama wool has very little. Consequently, llamas are used mainly as
pack animals, and as a limited source of wool, meat, and hides for
household use and inter-household and inter-community exchange.
Casaverde's (1977:174) 1970 census in a highland district of southern
Peru showed totals of 10,395 alpacas, 3,580 llamas, and 3,886 sheep
(58 percent, 20 percent, and 22 percent, respectively). Similarly,
Inamura (1986:149) found that in another puna locality that 70-80
percent of domestic animals were female alpacas, while the remaining
20-30 percent consisted of male alpacas, llamas (of both sexes), and
sheep. Inamura (1986:151) has also noted the extent to which pastures
reserved for alpacas have been improved through canal irrigation,
while llamas are restricted to unimproved grazing land. This emphasis
on alpacas is probably a product of modern commerce, and seems
unlikely for pre-modern or prehispanic herders. Flannery et al.
(1989), for example, describe isolated herders in the Peruvian
south-central highlands who combine llamas and sheep, with no
alpacas.

A more detailed breakdown of herd composition is shown in Table
4.02. Although these latter data derive from the arid South Andean
puna, the high proportion of adult female animals and the low numbers
of sexed adult males stand out consistently.

Although they are closely related biologically, llamas and alpacas
have some very different needs and require somewhat different
management. Relative to alpacas, llamas are larger, stronger, and
hardier, with more flexible dietary needs, a greater capacity to cope
with predators, and a capacity for foraging and carrying burdens at
elevations between sea level and 5000 m asl. Although llama flocks
are routinely left unattended and un-corralled for considerable
periods of time in northern Chile and northwestern Argentina
(Gundermann 1988:107), the common modern practice in the Central
Andes, for both llamas and alpacas, is to corral them every night
(e.g., Flannery et al. 1989). Night-time corralling of camelids is
done for three primary reasons: (1) to provide protection from the
cold and wet; (2) to protect flocks from their natural predators
(mainly mountain lions, foxes, and condors); and (3) to discourage
human rustlers.

McCorkle (1987:71) reports that camelids are more capable than
sheep of caring for themselves because they generally "will not stray
far, will keep together in a group, and will often return home at
night of their own volition ... and [they possess] a strong
dominance hierarchy and a tendency to recognize only one or two human
masters, and the existence of a [camelid] band leader, and
[consequently] they are more difficult to rustle."
Nonetheless, the consequences for inadequate care of camelid flocks
can be very severe. Palacios (1977b:61), for example, notes that
prolonged droughts and serious snowstorms can produce losses of 50-60
percent.

Alpacas are much more delicate and demanding in terms of care and
diet, and they are never used to carry burdens. They are more
susceptible than llamas to diseases and infections, especially
new-born and very young animals. Flores (1979:90, 95), for example,
reports that young alpacas are seriously affected by mites and
diarrhea, with a mortality rate of 50-90 percent during the first
three months of life; Custred 1977b:66 reports annual mortality rates
of 25-40 percent. Llamas are also affected by mite-linked diseases,
but are more resistant to them than alpacas. The severity of mites
amongst modern camelid flocks may relate to the introduction of some
parasites along with sheep in the mid sixteenth century;
consequently, prehispanic camelid herds may have been significantly
less affected (Flannery et al. 1989:102-104). Nevertheless, several
sixteenth century sources refer to a serious, mange-like disease
(carache) that affected camelid herds (Dedenbach-Salazar
1990:121-122).

Because alpacas must consume herbaceous plants that grow only at
high elevations (Palacios 1977b:20; Webster 1971:177), and because
they are so sensitive to micro-organisms that flourish at lower
elevations, alpacas are rarely found below 4000 m asl. The optimal
elevation range for alpacas is between 4370-4800 m asl, and the only
region below 4100 m asl where alpacas have been successfully raised
in historic times is the Titicaca Basin, at 3800-4000 m asl (Custred
1977b:67). Llamas, on the other hand, thrive on a much more diverse
diet, and can survive in marginal pastures that could not suppport
alpacas. Palacios (1977b:20), for example, notes that llamas can even
make do with certain cactus species (e.g., Opuntia sp.) and the rough
tola bush (Lepydophylum quadrangulare) -- fare that would be
completely unpalatable for alpacas.

Because all domestic camelids tend to be gregarious and imitative
of the behavior of a herd's dominant animal, one experienced shepherd
can usually manage to care for several hundred animals (Palacios
1977b:42). Most herds today are in the range of a few score to a few
hundred animals. This size range has considerable time depth -- e.g.,
a seventeenth century source from the puna of western Bolivia
(Dedenbach-Salazar 1990:145-146) indicates that individual camelid
herds were separated by sex and comprised 200-400 animals; other
seventeenth century sources indicate the importance of dogs in
herding.

The grazing habits of llamas and alpacas are different enough so
as to require different kinds of shepherding care. Palacios
(1977b:39) notes that alpacas tend to cluster tightly in relatively
small groups within a restricted area, while llamas move much more
widely and continuously while feeding. Male animals of both species
are typically taken to the most marginal and distant pastures, while
females with their young are pastured much closer to their corrals
and in areas with better vegetation and more water.

Adult males and female camelids are usually separated while
grazing and while corralled in order to avoid two problems: (1)
copulations that would produce "out of season" births during the dry
season when colder temperatures and more limited pasture make it more
difficult to care for very young animals; and (2) male sexual
dis-interest that can be caused by continuous, daily contact with
females. Palacios (1977b:36) observes that male llamas lose their
sexual interest in females if they are herded together continuously
for more than approximately eight days; successful mating can only
occur by maintaining a degree of separation between un-castrated
males and sexually receptive females.

Alpacas are raised primarily for their fine wool for sale in
commercial markets. Some adult animals are shorn annually, usually in
December and January, and yield about 1.5 kilos of wool; animals that
are shorn only every two years yield about 3 kilos of wool (Flores
1979:93). Because alpaca wool is so valuable commercially, alpaca
herders devote great energy and attention to the breeding and
reproduction of their animals. This involves not only maximizing
successful pregnancies and births, but also the maintenance of
desirable wool quality (length, thickness, and color). Since white
wool is the commercially most desirable, some effort is made to
maintain herds of pure white animals (Flores 1979:91). Flannery et
al. (1989:112) note the abundant ethnohistoric evidence that in late
prehispanic times camelids of different colors and color combinations
were preferred for different ritual activities. This may also have
required additional care to prevent the indiscriminate intermixing of
male and female animals of different colors.

Achieving these goals of alpaca production requires a great deal
of watching, separation of animals of different sexes, ages,
maturation stages, and reproductive status, and penning different
categories of animals in separate corrals (e.g., Custred
1977b:67-68). Specific tasks include: (1) mate selection to maintain
desired wool color and vigor; (2) placing appropriate males and
sexually receptive females together in special corrals for mating at
intervals during Dec.-Feb.; (3) the separation of adult males from
pregnant females and un-weaned young animals (in order to prevent
assaults by the males), while unusually disruptive or unruly males
are often castrated; and (4) providing special care for adult females
and new-born animals in special facilities (usually small corral and
hut attachments to larger corrals) during the birth period
(Dec.-Feb.) when the very young animals are particularly susceptible
to diseases and predators. Inamura (1986:154) notes that sometimes
young animals are periodically rotated to unoccupied corrals where
mud, damaging to the animals' health, has not built up.

Flannery et al. (1989:96-97) report that llama herders, although
they have little concern with the color of their animals, still need
to separate receptive adult females from aggressive males. Llama
herders accomplish this by castrating most males in their herds at
3-4 years of age, leaving only a few sexually active adult males,
usually selected for their more docile dispositions. Most castrated
male llamas become pack animals.

Because alpacas are such valuable and vulnerable animals, they
must also be continuously protected by their human guardians from the
wind, cold, and wet, and predators (e.g., Flannery et al. 1989;
Webster 1971:177). This requires daily overseeing by human escorts
who live close to their herds. Early each morning these guardians
take the animals from their nearby corrals (where they are protected
overnight) out to graze in nearby pastures, and return them to their
corrals at the end of the day. This daily protection is especially
critical and intense for nursing females and their young (who are
weaned at about eight months of age) (Flores 1979:91).

The nightly penning of camelids in corrals also facilitates dung
collection (for use as fuel and fertilizer), ear-marking for
identification, and checking on females' pregnancy status. At
elevations below 4200 m asl, dung-rich corrals are commonly used as
agricultural plots every few years (Orlove 1977b:95).

Special care for pregnant females and very young animals is also
critical because of the low overall fertility of domestic camelids.
Flannery et al. (1989:99) report, for example, that on average llamas
give birth only once every other year, with no more than 4-6
offspring per individual animal during her lifetime; Flores (1979:90)
indicates that female alpacas typically have 5-7 lifetime
pregnancies. Palacios (1977b:34, 36) reports a fertility rate of
about 85 percent for llamas vs. only about 50 percent for
alpacas.

Flores (1986:147) notes that domestic camelids in southern Peru
are presently classified in 53 named categories, according to
variations in sex, color, age, reproductive status, and species type.
Some 20,000 categories are theoretically available if all
classificatory variables were to be fully employed. This complex
classification terminology reflects herders' great concern with
maximizing livestock productivity and with maintaining the physical
integrity of different categories of their animals. Inamura (1981:69)
reports a 4-category classificatory scheme that may be more typical
of modern subsistence-oriented camelid herders: (1) female alpacas
and their immature offspring; (2) male camelids; (3) female llamas
and their immature offspring; and (4) cargo llamas (castrated
males).

Camelid Meat and Hides. Adult llamas weigh between 75-125 kilos
(Palacios 1977b:34). Domestic camelids are usually killed for their
meat and skins when they are too old to be useful anymore for
breeding purposes or as cargo animals, or (in the case of alpacas)
when they cease to yield sufficient wool. For llamas this occurs at
no more than about 15 years of age (Flannery et al. 1989:99); alpacas
are usually slaughtered by the time they are eight years old
(Palacios 1977b:36). Such unproductive camelids are annually culled
from the herd at the beginning of the dry, cold season.

Palacios (1977a:157-159) reports that on average about 15 percent
percent of a camelid herd is butchered annually. Flores (1979:41) has
found that a "relatively poor" herder family consumes the meat of 3-4
animals per year, while "the well-to-do are accustomed to
slaughtering up to one animal a month" for their household needs.
Some camelid meat is dried and salted, for both household use and for
sale or exchange, and this activity is best done at the coldest,
driest time of the year (June and July). Such freeze-dried meat
(charki) can be stored for up to "a number" of years (Orlove
1977b:92-93).

The herders' annual round (adapted from Custred 1977b;
Dedenbach-Salazar 1990:121-122; Flores 1979; Palacios 1977b:42-48;
and Tomoeda 1985. This summary represents an "average," "typical"
round, one whose specific details may vary somewhat over time and
space. Dedenback-Salazar (1990:122) points out that some of this
variance relates to herders who occupy the upper kichwa vs. those who
reside in the puna.

(1) Birth, breeding, and shearing, December, January and February.
Females about to give birth are removed to better pastures and drier
quarters with fewer parasites and with fewer opportunities for very
young animals to drown in streams or ponds or swamps. For alpacas,
human assistance is often needed during the birth process itself;
llamas are apparently more self sufficient in this regard. Special
vigilance over new-born animals is desirable during the first few
weeks of life, especially to prevent their straying and being seized
by predators. Adult female animals are sexually receptive within
about 24 hours after giving birth; the gestation period is 11.5
months.

Intact males are mixed with receptive females for several days.
Females are checked to see if they are pregnant or not; pregnant
animals are identified with special colored cords, and are then kept
separated from the males. Adult virgin females, not naturally
receptive to males, are mixed with males for impregnation in special
ceremonies. Shearing is usually done during this same period, when
night-time temperatures are relatively high and the newly shorn
animals are thus exposed to a minimum of extreme cold.

(2) Census of new lambs, curing of sick animals, and ownership
marking of new animals: These activities are carried out in the
context of ceremonies during March and April.

(3) Taking animals to dry-season pastures. These movements begin
in early May. Adult males and females are kept separated. Older
animals are slaughtered during May, and their meat is dried, to be
exchanged later in the year for agricultural products; slaughtering
is best done by two-person teams.

(4) Routine dry-season pasturing care, May-November. This is the
period when the highest pastures are used, when there is the least
chance of snow cover. At least three separate herds must be
identified and maintained by herders who possess both llamas and
alpacas: (a) adult females and their young (alpaca and llama females
can be herded together); (b) adult male alpacas; and (c) adult male
llamas [I'm still unclear why males of the two species cannot be
herded together]. A fourth group must also be separated after the
young animals are weaned at an age of about 8 months (usually
beginning in Sept.), in order to prevent rough treatment by their
mothers and a loss of sexual interest in the young, maturing males if
they remain with adult females. These still immature animals cannot
be put with the herd of adult males because the latter are too
aggressive and rough. Each of these four groups requires its own
shepherd. Overly aggressive adult males, or males which do not appear
to be good breeding studs, are castrated from time to time; such
castrated males may be herded together with adult females.

(5) Trading expeditions occur throughout the year, although most
of them are in the dry-season (beginning as early as March and April,
and extending at intervals through Sept. and October), in order to
acquire agricultural products and other goods from kichwa settlements
(see below).

Camelids per household. For specialized puna herders, primarily
dependent on domestic animals for their livelihood, Custred
(1977:69-70) finds that the minimal number of animals for a herder
household to be economically viable is 30 llamas, 15 alpacas, and 10
sheep. "Wealthy" herding households in the same region have flocks
containing upwards of 200 llamas, 180 alpacas, and 20 sheep; maximal
household herds are up to 500 alpacas and 200-300 llamas. "Poor"
herding families, who usually work part-time as seasonal laborers for
"rich" households, may have small flocks of 3-5 llamas and 3-5
alpacas. Yamamoto (1981:130) notes that herder households in southern
Peru, with no involvement in agriculture, have average camelid flocks
of 200-300 animals. Other puna households in the region who combine
camelid herding with some cultivation of bitter potatoes, have flocks
averaging 100-200 animals.

Palacios (1977b:63) finds that a herd of 250 camelids is regarded
as the preferred size for adequate maintenance of a primarily herding
household; 150 animals/household is said to be the minimal size for
household maintenance; a household can no longer be primarily
dependent on herding when its flock fall below 50 animals. The ideal
household camelid herd composition (Table 4.03) yields a maximum of
160 new animals/year.

For the much drier puna of southwestern Bolivia, in a region
averaging ca. 3700 m asl that provides inadequate pasture for
alpacas, and where herders also cultivate a few potatoes and some
quinoa, T. West (1988) reports that the size of household llama-sheep
flocks varies as shown in Table 4.04.

The importance of camelid dung as a source of household fuel in
the almost-treeless puna cannot be over-emphasized. Winterhalder et
al. (1974:[get page nos.]), for example, have calculated that
a typical herder household requires access to the dung output of 75
animals in order to obtain 30 kilos of fuel per day for their
domestic cooking needs. Today, and in the historic past, dung has
been supplemented by peat and (more recently) kerosene for household
fuel.

Murra's (1965:192) examination of sixteenth century documentary
sources pertaining to the Titicaca Basin shows household camelid
herds in the 1560s ranging from 2-3 up to 500-1700 animals per
household, with modal sizes between 10-20 and 50-100 animals; some
form of communal grazing of flocks totaling several hundred, or even
several thousand animals, appears to have been common at that time,
with specific ownership of individual animals denoted by distinctive
ear-markings (Flannery et al. 1989:111). It seems unlikely that the
very large size of some documented sixteenth century communal herds
in the Titicaca Basin (up to 16,846 animals in one case) would ever
have been duplicated elsewhere: pastures in other parts of the
Central Andean puna are simply not extensive enough to accommodate
such large numbers of animals. Nevertheless, the Junín puna,
with over 3.5 million hectares of potential pasture (Matos 1994:45),
would probably have been capable of sustaining individual herds of
several thousand animals. We still know very little about the
necessarily complex management of such large herds.

Settlement patterns. Several writers describe modern puna herder
communities (e.g., Flannery et al. 1989, Flores 1975, 1979, Fonseca
and Mayer 1988, Gade and Escobar 1982, and Inamura 1981, 1986). Such
communities typically (although not always) comprise several score
herder households configured in two types of settlements: (1) a
single large, centrally situated nucleated village or small town, in
which each household maintains its own infrequently used residence;
and (2) numerous small hamlets (estancias), spaced several kms apart,
usually comprised of one extended family or several related
households (Inamura 1986:156-157).

Most puna pasture controlled by Indian herder communities is
communally owned, with some areas reserved for common grazing while
others are permanently ceded for the exclusive use of particular
extended family groups (e.g., Ossio 1983:50-52). This form of land
tenure has sometimes resulted in a strong pattern of local-group
endogamy in order to conserve traditional land titles. A common
pattern over the past century has been for sons to inherit their
fathers' rights to herds, pastures, and herding tools, while
daughters inherit their mothers' rights to agricultural lands and
equipment (Ossio 1983:57). There is also another, exogamous tendency
that functions to link puna herding households and communities more
securely to kichwa agriculturalists through kinship ties (Bastien
1978b; Flores 1975:14). The interplay between endogamous and
exogamous tendencies produces considerable variability in local
social structure.

The central village/town is a focal point for interaction between
herders and higher levels of regional and national administrative
hierarchy; it is also a source for certain necessities (e.g., radios,
batteries, metal tools, medicines, and some items of clothing) that
cannot be otherwise obtained.

The hamlets are occupied for periods ranging from a few weeks to a
few months, according to the frequency with which flocks must be
moved to fresh pastures; they are often supplemented by outlying
camps used as temporary shelters for shorter periods. Inamura
(1981:69-70, 1986:153-154) describes a pattern of household
transhumance in which, during the dry season, each family moves back
and forth between its main hamlet residence (estancia) and one or
more secondary residences (astanas or cabañas) located about a
half-hour's walk apart. During the wet season a family often occupies
its secondary residence(s), normally situated in more marginal
pastures that are inadequate during the dry season. Dedenback-Salar
(1990:145) notes sixteenth century references to long-term residence
of youthful herders living in small huts in remote pastures, well
removed from their families' main households.

Puna herding settlements tend to be much less nucleated than
kichwa settlements inhabited by agriculturalists (e.g., Flores
1975:15; Gade and Escobar 1982:446-447). This difference relates to
the herders' greater need for daily and seasonal movement between
pastures, and to the agriculturalists' dependence upon intensive,
irrigation-based agriculture requiring community administration and
cooperative maintenance. The expanding network of improved roads
since ca. 1950 has radically transformed the spatial configuration of
regional hierarchies as strategic road-side location has become a
primary factor in the placement of central socio-political and
economic functions.

During the wet season (Dec.-March) suitable pasture is potentially
available virtually everywhere in the Central Andean puna (Custred
1977a:159). Herders must periodically move their flocks as pasture in
any given locality becomes inadequate for one of two reasons: (1)
because less vegetation is available during the dry season
(May-Sept.); or (2) because flocks exhaust the available grass within
a few kms from the corrals to which they return every night. Seasonal
dryness is less critical in the wetter Peruvian central highlands
than for the drier puna of southern Peru and western Bolivia.
Nevertheless, even in the central highlands the dry season does lower
both the quantity and quality of most pasture. Consequently,
relatively well-watered pastures -- along stream and lakeshores,
around the edges of swampy ground (bofedales) -- are always at a
premium. Such localities are invariably sought after by herders
because they provide the richest, most dependable, and most
continuously available sources of feed for their animals.

Flores (1984), Palacios (1977a), and Orlove (1977b:95-96) point
out that bofedal pastures are often extended through artificial
irrigation and ponding. Palacios (1977a:166) describes two community
pasture-irrigation systems in the southern Peruvian puna that provide
water to an area totaling ca. 2200 hectares through two main canals
of 17 and 16 kms in length. Efforts to control such improved pastures
produce conflicts that often must be resolved through the mediation
of outside authorities (Custred 1977a:168-169). Comparable
competition over improved pastures, is documented for the sixteenth
and seventeenth century (Dedenbach-Salazar 1990:153-156).

A further complexity results from the different pasture needs of
llamas vs. alpacas: only llamas can make do with the low-quality
vegetation available in more marginal pastures. Alpaca herders seek
out areas where succulent young growth is available (Custred
1977b:68-69). Alpacas must usually be re-located more frequently than
llamas, simply because of their different dietary requirements. In
the wetter puna of central Peru, the movement of herds is typically
less frequent and over shorter distances than in the drier puna of
southern Peru and western Bolivia. Animals are often moved between
higher vs. lower elevations and between swampy vs. non-swampy zones
where different quantities and qualities of vegetation are seasonally
available. Herders reside alternatively in larger vs. smaller
settlements according to the interplay between their animals' needs
and pasture availability.

Herders' hamlets range between 3-10 households (Custred 1977b:71).
The largest and most-occupied settlements are invariably near the
best watered pastures, often strung out along stream or river margins
(Inamura 1981:68); the smallest and least frequently occupied
settlements usually are found in more marginal pastures. The larger
settlements typically contain the largest, most numerous, and most
substantial human dwellings grouped somewhat apart from the camelid
corrals. Houses are often rectangular in plan, with mortared stone
walls, and separate cooking and sleeping areas, and they often
include space for the long-term storage of cooking and eating
implements, food, wool, textiles, dried meat, skins, and tools
(Flores 1979:46-48; Inamura 1986:154). These rectangular dwellings
are variable in size; generally they range from 2-3 m on a side up to
ca. 5.5 x 3 m (Flores 1979:48-49); the details for one precisely
measured structure are presented in Table 4.05. These larger
settlements, situated as they are near the best pastures, are almost
always occupied during the dry season, when more marginal pastures
are least productive (Custred 1977a:159; cf. Flores 1979:92).

Table 4.05. Exterior dimensions of a typical herder's house,

after Arangueren (1975:123-124)

Section of house

meters

rear length

4.2

front length

3.4

left-side width

2.3

right-side width

2.1

Smaller herders' settlements typically have more rustic dwellings
that are usually occupied by less than a full complement of household
members. These houses are often circular and less carefully built,
with lower stone walls, and are usually too small for anything beside
sleeping and casual cooking; they are often constructed immediately
adjacent to small corrals (Custred 1977a:159, 1977b:71; Flannery et
al. 1989:43-45). These settlements are usually supplemented by
temporary camps where one or two individuals remain for short periods
caring for animals in pastures too far from the hamlets for daily
commuting. Such camps often comprise little more than a small
stone-walled hut and a single small corral (e.g., Inamura
1986:153).

Camelid corrals are quite variable in size. Most have stone walls
standing 0.8-1.0 m high, measuring 0.2-0.3 m thick, and enclosing
areas between 80-1000 m²; most corrals are 100-250 m² in
area; some corrals in the lower puna may be built of rectangular sod
blocks (Orlove 1977b:95). Corral area is related to both flock size
and to function -- e.g., some of the smallest corrals are set aside
for giving birth and caring for very young animals; some corrals are
used mainly for ceremonial purposes. Corrals in larger settlements
tend to be relatively large and rectangular, while those in smaller
settlements are more likely to be smaller and circular (e.g.,
Flannery et al. 1989:43-57).

In the relatively moist puna of Peru's central highlands, we might
expect to find less differentiation between wet-season and dry-season
herders' settlements, because herders are less constrained in where
they can pasture their animals during the dry season. Nevertheless,
Dedenbach-Salazar (1990:127) notes a 1534 documentary source that
refers to seasonal transhumance of full-time pastoralists in the
Junín puna. Land tenure considerations that affect access to
pastures can also have a significant impact on the timing and
duration of transhumant movements.

Houses in modern herders' settlements usually shelter a nuclear
family. Herders' hamlets typically comprise clusters of households
headed by closely related men (e.g., Flannery et al. 1989:50). These
households pool their labor for tasks associated with herd
management, house and corral building and repair, caring for aged
relatives and children, and trading expeditions. Groupings of a few
dozen hamlets typically comprise a local "district" community --
whose existence is often recognized as the lowest rung of the
state-imposed administrative hierarchy. Community solidarity and
cohesion is also achieved through integrative rituals that involve
all members in petitions or thanks-giving to the supernatural forces
that control the well-being of themselves and their herds (see
below).

Over the annual cycle, individual herder households move back and
forth between their residences in different-sized hamlets and camps,
alternatively breaking apart and coalescing according to the dictates
of their herds' pasture needs and to whatever constraints may be
imposed by land tenure arrangements. It is difficult to quantify this
general pattern because precise information on the camelid carrying
capacity of different puna environments is scarce. Palacios
(1977a:159, 1977b:60) indicates that in the puna of southern Peru,
humid bofedal pasture can sustain three camelids/ha during the dry
season. This compares with 1 camelid/ha on non-bofedal pasture during
the wet season

As we noted in Chapter 2, Matos (1994) has reported recent studies
of annual pasture requirements for sheep and camelids in the
Junín puna (Table 4.06).

Table 4.06. Annual Pasture Requirements in the Junín
puna,

after Matos (1994:45, based on unpublished 1984 ONERN Studies)

one sheep

5-10 ha of "improved" pasture

one camelid

10-17 ha of "un-improved" pasture

one camelid

20-25 ha of "least favorable" pasture

[try to get more carrying capacity data]

[check with Ramiro re meaning of "improved" pasture]

For the upper kichwa of the main Mantaro Valley in the Peruvian
central highlands, Browman (1974:195) has estimated an overall
average camelid carrying capacity of 50-125 animals/km² (.5-1.25
animals/ha, or .8-2.0 ha/animal); he suggests these figures might
even be doubled. These figures greatly exceed all other estimates
available to us, and we suspect they cannot be realistically applied
to puna contexts.

It is difficult to generalize about camelid carrying capacity in
the Central Andean puna from these diverse figures. The most
reasonable and comprehensive general estimate is probably that of
Matos (1994:45) who calculates that some 3,850,000 ha (38,500
km²) [check figures] of available pasture in the
Junín puna (an area much larger than our survey area) is
presently capable of sustaining 150,000-200,000 camelids -- an
average of ca. .04-.05 animals/ha, or 19-26 ha/camelid on a long-term
basis. Matos suggests that the prehispanic carrying capacity of this
same area may have been significantly higher, owing to modern
environmental deterioration.

Herders' cosmology and ritual. Herders desire the continued and
adequate supply of healthy animals. This end is served by a series of
formal rituals that propitiate and thank the supernatural forces that
control animal life. In common with kichwa agriculturalists, puna
herders share a belief in a primary life-giving force (a remote
being, usually referred to as Pacha Mama), and a hierarchy of more
approachable regional and local spirits, usually referred to as Apu
or Wamani (e.g., Flannery et al. 1989:182; Flores 1977:229; Gow and
Gow 1975:148-149; Matos 1994:39; Zuidema and Quispe 1967). The
wamani, who are considered to be the ultimate "owners" of camelid
flocks, are usually associated with prominent hills, but also with
lakes, cliffs, quebradas, springs, and other natural features (e.g.,
Duviols 1984:208-209; Rowe 1980), and it is commonly to these places
that rituals are directed, or where they are performed.

Several descriptions of contemporary Andean cosmology (e.g.,
Bastien 1978a) indicate that landscapes are traditionally visualized
in anthropomorphic terms, as living organisms comprised of different
components -- including natural features, animals, and humans (both
living and dead) that must interact appropriately in order for the
whole organism to survive and function. Ritual performances
(including pilgrimages, dances, and fighting), offerings, and
feasting often occur at, or near, shrines placed at locations deemed
to be particularly important within the anthropomorphized landscapes.
Often such places are at ecological junctures (e.g., between puna and
kichwa zones), or along major quebradas that separate socio-political
territories. Rituals are organized on household, community, regional,
and inter-regional levels.

Herders' rituals take several different forms, but almost always
include feasting and the deposition of offerings. Offerings include
small stones (sometimes bezoar stones, removed from camelid
intestines); zoomorphic stone or ceramic figures; small figurines
made of maize paste or grass; marine shells; coca leaves; camelid
fetuses; sacrificed adult camelids or parts of these animals; cloth;
flowers; maize beer (chicha), or other forms of alcohol (e.g.,
Arangueren 1975; Nachtigall 1975). These offerings symbolize the
essential generative life force (enqa) that is necessary for
successful animal reproduction, growth, and general well-being. The
life force of the material objects slowly seeps away and dissipates,
and so must be periodically renewed through ritual performances
associated with the deposition of new offerings (Flores 1975, 1977).
If these ritual performances are not carried out properly, the
camelid herds "on loan" from their wamani owners will desert their
human caretakers.

In her study of two early seventeenth century documents that
describe herders' rituals in the Junín puna, Dedenbach-Salazar
(1990:220-221) notes the special role of Lake Junín, and
neighboring smaller lakes, as the places of origin and residence of
wamani spirits. Participants in ritual dances used slings to hurl
special stones, or anthropomorphic figures made of straw, into the
lakes.

Ethnohistoric perspectives on herd management. Dedenbach-Salazar's
(1990) ethnohistoric analysis extends Murra's (1965) earlier study
and offers new insights into camelid herd management at the time of
European-contact. These sixteenth and seventeenth century sources
reflect the powerful impact of Inka imperial administration.
Particularly interesting is the extensive Quechua-language
terminology that makes clear distinctions between different
categories of herds, herders, and pastures (Table 4.07). [work
Murra 1965 into this]

The ethnohistoric sources indicate that herding was a pillar of
highland Andean economy, from the local community to the over-arching
Inka empire. Herders, animals, and pastures had different statuses
according to how they related to different organizational levels.
Differential wealth and prestige, for example, were defined by
different degrees of access to camelid resources. Some herders were
members of local communities who contributed their shepherding labor
as state tribute; others were more closely linked to Inka state
institutions as herding specialists. Some animals and pastures were
identified with local communities, while others were more directly
linked to the state -- some flocks and pastures were directly granted
to deserving individuals for different kinds of service to the state;
others were associated with different kinds of state secular or
religious institutions.

terms having to do with managing cargo llamas, or herding
groups of camelids in general

muchi-ku-q-mi-quaru

"enviar el ganado de día al pasto para volver a la
noche"

take animals out to pasture by day and return at
night

qarqu-waylla-man

"echar al pasto muchos días"

take out to pasture for many days, without returning to
main base

[check p. 142-143]

returning animals to corral at nightfall

[check p. 142-143]

grouping animals in corral

[check p. 142-143]

careless intermixing of camelids belonging to different
owners

[check p. 143-144]

leading and controlling animals with cords

waylla

pasture

llaqta

common pasture

panpa

communal pasture

[recheck these in notes]

Agricultural Ecology

In Table 2.24-A we summarized the altitudinal and productive
ranges of indigenous cultigens. Although these cereals and tubers are
adapted to a wide range of climatic variability, only a few tuber
species are important in the lower puna; above 4200 m asl
agricultural production is insignificant because of cold
temperatures. Highly productive agriculture is confined to the
kichwa, below 3850 m asl.

Because of the uncertainties of rainfall, water control in the
forms of canal irrigation and swamp drainage is often necessary to
achieve high agricultural productivity. Uncertainties about water
supply are compounded at elevations above 3000 m asl by the
unpredictable onset and termination of frosts. High agricultural
productivity can only be maintained through the application of
fertilizers (e.g., camelid dung, ashes, household wastes, and
grasses) and the maintenance of fallowing regimes. The high
proportion of sloping terrain means that terracing must often be
employed in order to achieve full agricultural productivity.

Because there are so many different altitude-defined crop niches,
and because there is such great altitude variation within short
horizontal distances, agriculturalists face a complicated schedule of
planting, weeding, and harvesting. Different variants of cereals and
tubers have different planting and harvesting times. This means that
many different crops are available over a large part of an annual
cycle, and that poor harvests in one niche may be offset by good
harvests in another. This complicated scheduling is also demanding in
terms of administration and travel time between fields at different
altitudes.

Agriculturalists must be concerned with the demands of field
preparation, fertilizing, planting, weeding, caring for growing
crops, guarding and harvesting mature crops, and maintaining an
infrastructure of terraces, irrigation canals, and field walls
(Camino 1980; Camino et al. 1981; J. Matos et al. 1958). Many of
these tasks must be performed at the same times as some of the most
demanding activities related to herding. Growing and standing crops
can be seriously menaced by the predations of domestic animals.
Consequently, where herding and cultivation are locally combined,
cultivated fields must be strongly fenced and/or the daily movements
of local flocks must be carefully controlled (McCorkle 1987).

Traditional agriculture employs a variety of sectorial fallowing
regimes that maintain long-term soil fertility and minimize the risk
of poor harvests for individual households (e.g., Camino 1980; Camino
et al. 1981; Goland 1992; Guillet 1981; Mayer 1985; Orlove and Godoy
1986). These regimes demand considerable investment in
administration, definition and protection of community territory, and
walking back and forth between scattered fields. Additional walking
and prolonged camping time must be expended if some members of
agricultural households need to devote themselves to the care of
domestic animals in higher pastures well away from their main
residences.

Agricultural tasks. Table 4.08 summarizes the principal
agricultural tasks -- these are in addition to the maintenance of
irrigation, drainage, and terrace facilities.

Much agricultural land in the Andean highlands is terraced. Some
terraces, especially where irrigation is used, are well-made,
stone-faced features. Less elaborate terraces are probably more
typical: e.g., the "andenes rusticas" (rustic terraces) described by
Fonseca and Mayer (1988:70). The latter features do not have stone
retention walls, but rather take advantage of naturally occurring

Table 4.08. Agricultural tasks, (adapted from Camino et al.
1981:176)

Name of Task

Activity

Abonamiento

Fertilizing, with animal dung, grass, or ashes1

Barbecho or Chakmay

Plowing, usually with a foot plow

Siembra

Planting

Aporque

Mounding earth up around plant stalks

Deshierbe

Weeding

Cosecha

Harvest

1 -- Small quantities of commercial fertilizers are now also
used.

breaks in slope whose natural level surfaces are reinforced by
rows of bushes, cactus, or small trees that stabilize the terrain.
This type of agricultural field system is similar to what R. West
(1968) has called "semi terracing" in highland Mexico -- the main
difference being that in the Andes the cultivated hillslopes tend to
be steeper.

Traditionally, fertilizer is applied in three main ways: (1) by
setting up temporary corrals atop the terraced fields and placing
livestock there for a few days; (2) by hauling animal dung from
pastures to fields on pack animals; and (3) by covering the fields
with cut grass (both local, and brought in from the puna), which is
allowed to dry and then turned under during the barbecho. Ashes from
household cooking hearths are also used as fertilizer, and since the
mid 1970s there has been minor use of commercial fertilizers.

There are few detailed studies of traditional vegetative
fertilizers in contemporary Central Andean agriculture [check
Goland; maybe ask Winterhalder or Goland]. This is an important
topic that merits more investigation. King (1911:202-212), for
example, provides a richly detailed account of how important "green
manure" (grasses, weeds, stalks, leaves) was in the intensive
agriculture of eastern Asia in the early 20th century, before the
advent of chemical fertilizers in that region, and in a context where
animal dung (including human) was insufficient relative to the
overall need to maintain continuously high agricultural productivity.
King's study suggests that green manure could have been important in
precolumbian Central Andean agriculture.

Land preparation prior to planting is usually done with the
traditional Andean foot plow (chaquitaclla). Typically this hard work
is performed by a husband-wife team: the man thrusting the
iron-tipped tool into the earth to bring up the clods of fresh earth,
and the woman overturning the clods to fully expose the newly turned
soil. Planting is similarly done in a field that has been plowed some
weeks or months earlier, with the woman inserting the seed into the
turned (or re-turned) earth. [check on this]

The hilling-up of potatoes and other crops is generally undertaken
about a month or so after initial planting (Yanamoto 1981:126). Here
the foot-plow is employed to open a shallow ditch (surco), about 30
cms wide and 20 cms deep, alongside each row of plants. The earth
from this ditch is then thrown up around the sides of the growing
plants with a J-shaped wooden mattock tipped with an iron blade
(Orlove 1977b:93-94). This operation is apparently necessary in order
to reduce the number of plant stems and to prevent the buildup of
excessive humidity around the growing plant [check on
this].

Mature tubers are dug out of the earth with a mattock. Some are
taken directly to the dwellings for consumption and storage, but many
are placed in specially prepared grass-lined and brush-covered pits
dug in or near the field. Layers of tubers, usually separated by
grass layers according to variety, are placed within such pits, from
which they are removed as needed. These pits typically measure 1.2 m
in diameter and 1.5 m deep (Fujii and Tomeada 1981:47-48).

Mature stands of wheat, barley, and quinoa are cut with an iron
sickle, and are commonly threshed and winnowed in or near the fields.
Threshing is commonly accomplished by dumping the cut grain onto
stone floors where they be trod upon by oxen or beaten with wooden
rods. Winnowing is typically performed by tossing the threshed grain
and adhering chaff into the air with wooden forks so that the wind
removes the lighter chaff, while the heavier grains sink back to the
earth. Mature maize ears are left to dry on the stalks in the fields,
then carried to the permanent residences where they are stored until
used (ca. 70 percent for chicha) (Fujii and Tomoeda 1981:45).

[maybe add fuller descriptions of other tasks and tools;
quantify amt. of land cultivable per household, maybe get photos or
illustrations of these tools in use -- maybe Michael Brown's slides
can be made into B&W prints, or maybe there are illustrations in
the UNAM Andean technology book; are there any time and motion
studies -- maybe ask Enrique Mayer, Goland, Winterhalder]

Agricultural zones. Camino (1980) and Camino et al.'s (1981)
five-division classification of agricultural zones in the southern
Peruvian highlands appears to have broad applicability. The main
outlines of this classification are summarized in Table 4.09.
Ideally, each household has direct access to fields in each of the
five zones within its community territory. Zone C, the primary and
most accessible niche, is by far the most important in economic
terms. Zone A, not listed in Table 4.09, is uncultivated herding land
above 4100 m asl.

Table 4.09. Agricultural zones in highland southern Peru,

(adapted from Camino et al 1981:176-187)

Zone

Elevation

(m asl)

Crops

Cultivation Practices

B, "Luki Manda"

3800-4100

mainly bitter potatoes plus oca and izaño

6 rotating sectors; 1 in cultivation and 5 in fallow

C, "Uray Manda"

3200-3800

potatoes1, izaño, oca, olluco, habas

6-sector rotational sequence (see Table 4.10)

D, "Anexo"2

3200-3400

2 types of potatoes

minor maize

6-sector rotational sequence

E, "Tierras de Maiz"

2600-3200

mainly maize3; some potatoes; minor beans, squash,
yacón, and racacha 1 yr. of potatoes, followed by
several years of maize interplanted with minor crops. Use of
ox-drawn plows.

F

Below 2000

coffee, coca for cash sales

Far from community; commercial use only

1 -- Up to 30 varieties of potatoes are
planted.

2 -- This sector is 12 kms distant, and therefore less
intensively used than "C".

3 -- Several varieties of maize are planted and kept
separated.

Sectorial fallowing regimes. Orlove and Godoy (1986:171, 185)
summarize the general characteristics of 51 ethnographically known
sectorial fallowing regimes in the kichwa and lower puna between
central Peru and western Bolivia:

(1) Each of the sectorial fallowing systems is a land-use system
which consists of a set of lands associated with a set of
households.

(2) The set of lands are divided into a number (n) of sectors. The
lands which make up each sector are contiguous.

(3) All households own plots in most or all sectors....

(4) There is a sequence of n-year-long uses for the lands. Some of
these uses consist of the planting of a specific annual crop or small
number of annual crops. The set of crops may different among the
successive cropping uses out of the total set of uses. The other uses
are fallowing, combined with grazing. All the fallowing uses occur
after all the planting uses.

(5) All n sectors pass through the same sequence of n-year-long
uses. In any given year, one and only one sector will have each
cropping use, and the number of sectors which are fallowed is equal
to the number of fallow uses in the n-year cycle.

(6) When a sector is used for planting, each household has access
to usufruct rights to its plot or plots in that sector.

(7) When a sector is used for fallowing and grazing, all
households have access and grazing rights to the entire sector.

(8) This land use is maintained and enforced by institutional
means.

The average number of households participating in each of these
community-regulated fallowing systems is 350. The origin and time
depth of these systems are unknown, although their absence in the
northern and southern Andean highlands (and even in northern Peru)
suggests they are mainly adaptive in the southern half of the Central
Andes. In most cases where irrigated land exists today, it tends to
be privately owned and privately controlled (Fonseca and Mayer
1988:78-80; Guillet 1981:142); community-administered sectorial
fallowing regimes occur predominantly where rainfall-based
cultivation predominates. Areas where commercial agriculture has made
substantial inroads have witnessed a considerable deterioration of
traditional sectorial fallowing systems (e.g., Guillet 1987:86-87;
Mayer 1979).

Guillet (1981:145) argues that community oversight is necessary in
order to maintain the long-term integrity and viability of sectorial
fallowing regimes: the adherence of individual households to rules
about fallowing, planting sequences, and grazing rights affects the
well-being of the entire community. This is reinforced by the fact
that individual households are often dependent upon infrastructural
facilities (e.g., terraces, canals, roadways, fences) that can only
be adequately maintained through community effort.

The communities studied by Camino et al. (1981) employ a
six-sector fallowing system. This means that communal lands are
subdivided into six different sectors. Each designated sector follows
a specific crop-rotational sequence (Table 4.10), and at any given
time each of the other five sectors in the zone is at a different
point in its rotational cycle. This deliberately produces a maximum
diversification of crops over time and space -- a result which
buffers against crop failures caused by unpredictable and highly
localized climatic variations. What this means for each household is
that all available cultigens are growing somewhere within its
usufruct holdings at any given time, while at the same time some of
its lands are always lying fallow.

Another detailed description of a comparable sectorial fallowing
system comes from the upper Cañete drainage on the Pacific
slope in central Peru (Fonseca and Mayer 1988:72-74). This is an
8-sector system, and in any given year there are three sectors in use
and five in fallow. Individual households maintain use rights in each
sector. Each year a new sector is opened to a 6-year rotational
cycle, and each year a sector that was cultivated the previous year
goes into a 3-year fallow period, whose conclusion will bring the
full 6-year cycle to a close. Community management is crucial to
viability of the enterprise. The great variability of sectorial
fallowing regimes in the upper Cañete and in other parts of
the Peruvian central highlands (e.g., Mayer 1971) reflects the
flexibility of these systems as they are periodically readjusted to
take into account changes in community and household demography.

Table 4.10. Rotational sequence in 6-year cycle in Zone C. After
Year 6, the cycle begins again with Year 1. (Adapted from Camino et
al. 1981:179-182).

Year

Crops

Tasks

1

potatoes interplanted with izaño

2 aporques (1st in Oct., 2nd in Nov.-Dec.)

2

mainly oca; sometimes olluco or izaño

no barbecho; no fertilizer applied

3

oca, olluco, izaño; sometimes fava beans

no fertilizer applied

4

fava beans

some fertilizer applied

5

fallow

grazed by livestock

6

fallow

barbecho and main application of fertilizer

[check: barbecho in Years 3, 4?]

Fonseca and Mayer (1988:75) point out that the most basic factors
that underlie and sustain the traditional sectorial fallowing systems
are (1) low soil fertility, owing to the slow decomposition and
buildup of organic material in soils of cold climates; (2) the
scarcity and expense of fertilizer; and (3) the danger of erosion if
sloping lands are cultivated or grazed too intensively. These
circumstances are somewhat alleviated on irrigated land, and this is
a principal reason why such land is often not included in sectorial
fallowing regimes. Locally elected officials (camayoq) enforce rules
about planting, fallowing, crop rotation, and grazing by making
frequent tours of inspection (Fujii and Tomoeda 1981:54). As
recompense for their services, these officials are provided with
small huts for living quarters in areas where their tours take them,
together with a small share of each household's crop.

(1) Agricultural work is virtually continuous throughout the
annual cycle, although there is comparatively more activity during
two periods: March-June, and Sept.-November. The least-busy time,
late June through early August, is the time when chuño
(freeze-dried potatoes) and ccalla (dried oca) are prepared.

(2) Tuber harvesting is nearly continuous during the year,
excepting only October and November. Within any given sector and for
any given variant, tuber harvesting begins earliest at lower
elevations, and extends to fields at higher elevations through the
year.

(3) Two main agricultural-task seasons can be distinguished
(especially if one focuses on the economically most important terrain
between 3200-3800 m asl): (a) Feb.-July, a time of land preparation
and harvesting; and (b) August-December, a time of planting and
weeding. Harvesting invariably proceeds from lower to higher
elevation for given sectors and crop variants; land preparation,
planting, and weeding for given sectors and crop variants begin at
higher elevation and proceed to lower elevations through the year.
This dichotomy in the timing of agricultural tasks reflects the
additional time required for plants to reach maturity in the colder,
less fertile soils at higher elevations.

Note: In Fig. 4.01, each activity unit is shown as a discrete
lineal segment that pertains to a specific crop in a specific sector
rotation cycle. Ideally, this diagram illustrates the tasks engaged
in by each household within a sectorial fallowing regime. No
information is available about the timing of barbecho below 3200 m
asl.

Table 4.11. The annual round from two kichwa districts in central
Peru,

(after Matos et al. 1958:56-58, and Soler 1954:108-109)

Crop

Planting

Cultivating

Harvesting

Maize

Nov.-Jan.

Jan.-March

May-July

Potatoes

May-Sept.

Aug.-Oct.

Nov.-Jan

Oca, olluco, mishua

August.-Oct.

Nov.-Jan.

April-June

Quinoa

Jan.-Feb.

April

June-July

Barley, wheat, fava beans

Jan.-Feb.

n.d.

Aug.-Sept.

Another perspective on the agricultural round can be obtained from
a month-by-month compilation of activities from a kichwa community in
central Peru (Table 4.12). This is a mestizo community, more involved
in commercial production than those we have discussed above;
nevertheless, the data are indicative of general modern
practices.

Settlement patterns. For most households, many different
agricultural tasks are likely to be going on at the same time, and
often in scattered fields at some distance from each other; this is
compounded by the fact that many households also have some
involvement in herding activities above 4100 m asl. The household
thus faces a major challenge in its efforts to effectively apportion
and direct its labor force toward activities that often overlap and
compete. McCorkle (1987:59) has suggested that the complexities of
labor allocation in these contexts may select for extended-family
household structures, in which more people can cooperate in the
performance of essential tasks that are dispersed in space and time.
The Catholic ritual calendar, with its numerous saint's days and
fiestas distributed over the year, is an important reference for
beginning and ending different agricultural activities (Camino
1980:29).

It is usually necessary for several members of each household to
spend part of their time each year living in small hamlets and/or
with relatives in localities well outside the main settlement.
Yamamoto (1981:119-120) notes that, in the Cuzco region, small huts
for temporary residence typically measure ca. 4 x 2 m in area, with
stone walls and a thatched roof, containing a cooking hearth and
grinding stone; new roofing grass and portable kitchen utensils are
brought to the structure for use during the time of its
occupation.

Seed potatoes are usually stored in stone bins or atop straw mats
at or near dwellings in the lower puna, where low temperatures
prevent premature sprouting and rotting (Yamamoto 1981:124). At the
appropriate time, these seed potatoes, together with loads of animal
dung for fertilizer, are transported on pack animals to fields at
lower elevations. Because domestic camelids defecate in a single
locality in both corrals and pastures, it is particularly convenient
to collect their dung.

Occasionally labor demands exceed a household's capacity, and
temporary outside workers must be hired, or reciprocal labor
exchanges made with other households. Another response, for
households that also have small herds of llamas or sheep, is to bring
these animals to the fields during the busiest harvest periods: the
animals can be cared for at the harvest site, and immediately put out
to graze and defecate in the stubble of the harvested fields
(Yamamoto 1981:123-124). In some cases, kichwa households who combine
herding and agriculture find it convenient to combine all their
flocks under the care of a few shepherds during periods when
agricultural tasks are particularly demanding (McCorkle 1987:65).

The scheduling of labor demands produces a dispersed regional
settlement pattern, typically with a large, centrally situated
settlement of a few hundred people situated at 3200-3700 m asl in the
heart of the most important tuber-producing zone, and numerous small
hamlets (estancias) scattered widely at higher and lower elevations.
In addition to the fields outside the major settlements, many
households have intensively cultivated kitchen gardens close to their
houses inside these large villages (McCorkle 1987:62). Most people
spend most of their time at the main settlements, but there is
usually some permanent occupation of the smaller hamlets as well,
although often not by complete households; and, as previously noted,
some central settlements are actually mostly vacant most of the time
(Webster 1971, 1973).

Water management. Irrigation has greatly expanded agricultural
production in the kichwa and lower puna; in many cases irrigation
canals are directly incorporated into extensive systems of terraced
fields (e.g., Fonseca and Mayer 1988; Mitchell and Guillet (eds.)
1993; Treacy 1989). Unlike the desert coast (e.g., Netherly 1984),
highland irrigation systems are usually small scale, with multiple
sources (often springs or small puna lakes). They are usually managed
at the local community level, with annual communal canal-cleaning and
repair operations overseen by locally elected officials (Fujii and
Tomoeda 1981:56-57; J. Matos et al. 1958:63). Skar (1982:150-151) has
noted that "more than 10 households sharing the same irrigation ditch
tends to lead to trouble." Nevertheless, highland irrigation networks
often provide the economic foundations for important Andean social
units, and the canal networks themselves have often served to
physically delineate and symbolize these units on the ground (B.
Isbell 1974; Ossio 1978; Sherbondy 1982, 1986; Zuidema 1986).

Fonseca and Mayer (1988:78-80) delineate two very different types
of irrigation systems: one intensive (watara), and the other
extensive (vichka). Watara land, which typically comprises 10-20
percent of the community's total irrigated terrain, is cultivated
every year. The irrigated fields are on well-built terraces, close to
the largest settlements, and are heavily fertilized with household
wastes and animal dung. Multi-household work groups usually cultivate
these watara fields cooperatively, and also work together to maintain
the irrigation canals. Vichka land, on the other hand, is farther
away from the settlements, with casually built terraces, less
irrigation, little or no fertilization, and with fields worked by
single household units.

A lesser known form of Andean water management is the Qocha
system, described by Flores (1984) for the lower puna of the northern
Titicaca Basin. These are shallow depressions (usually circular,
averaging about 100 m in diameter) that collect rainwater runoff. It
is uncertain whether these features are natural or artificial. The
ponded water soaks into the underlying earth and periodically
provides sufficient moisture for crops. Today, in an area just
northwest of Lake Titicaca, some 256 km² of these depressions
(approximately 20,000 individual qochas) remain in use, planted with
rotational sequences of potatoes, quinoa, kañiwa, wheat, and
barley; an additional 128 km² are found nearby in an abandoned
state (Flores 1984:89). Qochas also seasonally provide household
water, and they are prized as pastures during fallow years. Flores
(1984:94) notes how easy it is to miss seeing remains of abandoned
qochas.

Qochas appear to be quite distinct from the Qochawiña
discussed by Orlove (1977b:95-96). The latter average only 7-10
m² in area and 1-2 cms deep. Like Qocha, they function to
collect rainfall run-off. The ponded moisture improves the growth and
quality of grass. Commonly "several" are found in an area of 1-2
hectares in the lower puna. The Qochawiña are mainly a form of
improved pasture, although they apparently also function as places
where tubers are periodically grown.

Swampy zones in several parts of the Central Andean highlands
contain numerous prehispanic ridged fields (Erickson 1987, 1988;
Hastorf and Earle 1985; Kolata 1986). These fields, analogous to the
Mexican chinampas (Armillas 1971; Parsons 1985), apparently did not
continue to be used in historic times.

Agriculturalists' cosmology and ritual. Like herders,
agriculturalists are concerned with propitiating and thanking a
hierarchy of wamani spirits who are associated with neighboring
hills, lakes, and other places, and who are ultimately responsible
for the supply and well being of crops and domestic animals. As for
herders, Christian beliefs and ceremonies have become part of
agriculturalists' ritual performances.

B. Isbell's (1974) study of the Chuschi community in the Peruvian
south-central highlands provides a good example of the kichwa
agriculturalists' vertically structured local universe. There are
four zones: (1) the main settlement itself (pueblo), situated at 3150
m asl; (2) the quichwa, agricultural land where maize can be grown,
immediately surrounding the village at elevations between 2600-3300 m
asl; (3) the mayo patan, a zone of low-lying land, below 2600 m asl,
along the river; and (4) the sallqa, more distant terrain between
3300-4000 m asl, where maize cannot be grown. Each of these four
principal zones is, in turn, sub-divided into two sectors, referred
to as "upper" (hanay) and "lower" (uray).

Variations on this vertical zonation are widely known throughout
the Central Andean highlands. In many cases these local universes
also contain a puna herding niche, at elevations above the upper
limits of effective agriculture (e.g., Bastien 1978a, Harris 1978,
1982, 1985; Platt 1982, 1986; Skar 1982; Valderrama and Escalante
1988; Valle 1970).

The borders of these ecological divisions and sub-divisions are
often physically marked with shrines (often small chapels) where
formal rituals are performed. Zonal subdivisions are typically
complementary in their functions -- e.g., the upper and lower sectors
of the main village contain, respectively, the architectural centers
of religious (the church) and secular (the district administrative
building) authority. Integrative ritual performances focus on the
saints images and crosses associated with the main church and many of
the border-defining chapels. At intervals these images of "minor"
saints and crosses are brought in ritual processions from the small
chapels to the main church where they are briefly reunited with their
"mother" images.

Many of these community rituals are associated with communally
performed tasks, such as cleaning irrigation canals. Other components
of community ritual focus on water sources (springs and lakes) to
which offerings (including coca and chicha) are carried in formal
processions whose routes are defined by the small chapels, where
additional offerings are made and where the saints' images are
replaced after their stays in the main church. Processions to and
from the chapels typically begin and end at the main settlement,
where additional offerings and feasting often occur. Ritual
significance is often attached to points where major irrigation
canals converge, and community cemeteries may be placed at such
locations in recognition of this significance.

Exchange between Puna Pastoralists and Kichwa agriculturalists

Today herders and agriculturalists exchange their complementary
products and services in three main ways: (1) through impersonal
buying and selling at commercial marketplaces in towns and larger
villages; (2) through non-commercial trading expeditions that link
established trading partners along traditional routes traversed by
llama pack trains; and (3) labor and product exchanges between close
relatives living in different zones (Bastien 1978a; Flores 1985;
Fonseca and Mayer 1988; Harris 1982, 1985; Mayer 1971; Platt 1982,
1986).

Before the advent of motorized transport, large annual or
semi-annual regional fairs were held in strategic places (usually in
puna localities with adequate pasture for hundreds of pack animals
for a week or two) in order to redistribute non-local products for
which there was only infrequent demand (Wrigley 1919). Commercial
markets and fairs need no further discussion here; both seem
inextricably associated with nineteenth and twentieth century
commerce. Trading expeditions and inter-household exchange, however,
may be more relevant to our concerns.

Trading expeditions. It is puna herders who invariably organize
and undertake trading expeditions. Prior to motorized transport, pack
llamas were the only effective way to move quantities of material
through rugged highland landscapes. Even today the high cost of
gasoline and the absence of adequate roads in many areas means that
motorized vehicles cannot always move effectively. Mules and horses
can carry heavy burdens overland through rugged terrain. However,
because of the high costs for their feed and breeding, horses and
(especially) mules are economically viable as freight carriers only
in commercial enterprises.

Only puna camelid herders possess large numbers of cargo llamas.
Furthermore, these herders frequently are situated between
ecologically complementary zones (kichwa, montaña, and desert
coast). Consequently, puna camelid herders naturally occupy a
strategic position vis a vis the inter-zonal movement of
complementary products. These herders continue to be important as
transporters of goods between agricultural communities.

Pack llamas are capable of carrying burdens of 25-55 kgs
(depending on length of journey). These animals begin to be trained
for transport work at about two years of age, and are usually ready
for full service when they are three years old. Groups of related men
in herding communities organize trading expeditions, usually
comprised of 20-30 pack animals (up to 50 can be managed by a single
experienced man), covering 10-30 kms/day in daily marches of about
8-10 hours. Pack llamas can apparently go for 4-5 days without food
on such journeys. Pack-train management is greatly facilitated by the
presence of well-trained lead animals who are easily managed and who
help keep subordinate animals in order. Caravan routes are typically
marked by the presence of stone-walled corrals, placed at intervals
of a day's travel, intended for overnight encampments (Concha
1975:87; Flannery et al. 1989:106; Flores 1979:94-95; Inamura
1981:69).

Dedenbach-Salazar (1990:168) reports that Inka imperial caravans
of the early sixteenth century comprised 400-800 pack llamas.
Obviously, the management and infrastructural support of such large
caravans would have been much more complex than for the comparatively
small undertakings of modern times.

Today these expeditions vary in length between a few days and a
few weeks, and typically involve groups of 3-10 related men and their
animals. They move along traditional routes between their established
trading partners at lower elevations from whom they acquire maize,
quinoa, potatoes, fruits, coca, and pottery in exchange for dried
meat, wool textiles, salt, dung, and harvest-transport services. Boys
often accompany their fathers or uncles in order to learn the routes
and procedures, and to meet the trading partners and their families,
with whom they eventually will come to have personal ties themselves.
The typical pattern is to make several short expeditions, of a few
days duration, to nearby upper-kichwa areas, and a few longer
expeditions, up to several weeks in length, to more distant places at
lower elevations in the kichwa and even the Pacific coast and ceja de
montaña (e.g., Bandelier 1910: ;Casaverde 1977; Concha 1975;
Flannery et al. 1989:108; Flores 1979; Inamura 1981 Tomoeda 1985
[Scott sponsor for mid 19th cent.]).

Salt is commonly moved in trading expeditions between its puna
source areas and consumers in the kichwa (e.g., Matos 1994:35-37).
Some puna herders spend significant amounts of time in extracting and
packaging salt. Concha (1975:74-76) and Inamura (1981:73), for
example, note that some puna herders make special expeditions of 2-8
days duration to salt sources they control in order to acquire
quantities sufficient for their subsequent trading expeditions.
Because salt sources occur primarily in the puna, and because only
puna herders control large numbers of pack llamas, in traditional
Andean economies only puna herders can acquire and move salt in any
quantity.

Form of exchange barter and purchase purchase barter barter barter
barter and purchase

Two patterns emerge from these data. First, most trading
expeditions occur during the dry season, especially for those of
greater than one week's duration. The only wet-season expeditions
undertaken by the Chalhuanca herders are to the rainless Pacific
coast. Second, although much of what these herder-traders carry for
exchange are what they produce themselves (e.g., meat, cloth,
llamas), they also supply their trade partners with products from
other zones (e.g., coca, sugar, fruit).

Concha (1975:82) notes that the puna herders who organize and
undertake trading expeditions usually lack good information about (1)
the precise time of the main crop harvests in specific kichwa
agricultural settlements, and (2) the relative success or failure or
availability of specific crops in specific settlements. Analogous
uncertainties also exist for the kichwa agriculturalists at the other
end of the exchange, who are dependent upon the puna-based traders
for key goods and services (including transporting harvested crops
from field to storehouse): e.g., it is difficult for them to plan the
precise timing of their harvests if they remain uncertain about when
the herder-traders will actually arrive to assist them in this
essential task (Inamura 1981:70-72). These uncertainties produce
great concern and stress on the part of those involved.

Other forms of labor and product exchange between herders and
cultivators. When herders and cultivators live in relatively close
proximity (i.e., within less than a day's travel time), it becomes
possible for them to exchange complementary goods and services in
more regular and predictable ways. As in the case of the
long-distance trading expedition described above, these relationships
are often defined and validated in ritual terms, and occasionally
through affinal ties between inter-married households. In such cases,
specific groups of puna herders supply specific groups of kichwa
agriculturalists with such things as dung and animal transport at
planting or harvesting times when agriculturalists most urgently
require them for fertilizing their fields and carrying their crops
from field to storehouse.

Such visits are also occasions when herders bring dried meat,
textiles, etc. to their agriculturalist neighbors. In return, the
visiting herders are supplied by their kichwa hosts with lodging and
meals, and with supplies of recently harvested tubers and cereals to
take back home with them. Harvest times are particularly appropriate
for this kind of herder-cultivator interaction. It is at this time
when the stubble and weeds of recently harvested fields serve as
excellent fodder, when the harvested fields are in need of the
manuring provided by a few days of animal grazing, and when the
agriculturalists are most likely to have surplus supplies of the
tubers and cereals needed by herders (McCorkle 1987:66-67).

[add material from Harris, Platt, Bastien,]

Integration of Herding and Cultivating Economies through
Ritual

The extent of inter-marriage between puna herders and kichwa
agriculturalists varies greatly today. Tomoeda and Fujii (1985:301),
for example, report that no more than 1 percent of all marriages in
one district they studied are of this type. In other nearby places,
however, the inter-marriage rate is much higher, up to 60 percent in
some cases (Inamura 1981:76). Inter-marriage between herders and
agriculturalists obviously facilitates access to complementary
products and resources that become available through the normal
channels of kin-based sharing and reciprocity. On the other hand,
community exogamy can disperse rights to land, fields, and herds --
basic resources that often can remain fully concentrated and
consolidated only through community endogamy.

The very real difficulties of establishing bonds of inter-marriage
between puna herders and kichwa agriculturalists are often overcome
through building other kinds of linkages, typically defined and
validated through formal ritual, between these complementary groups.
We will now consider several inter-related aspects of such
ritual.

Anthropomorphic Landscapes. Ethnographic studies of the isolated
Qollahuaya in Bolivia (Bastien 1978) describe local groups (ayllus),
typically comprising many hundreds of individuals, that occupy
well-defined territories extending over areas measuring several dozen
kilometers in length and width. The Qollahuaya are particularly well
described in this regard, but comparable anthropomorphized landscapes
in other parts of the central Andes have also been described (e.g.,
Allen [1982], Gow and Gow [1975]), and Vokral
[1991]). Classen (1993) and Zuidema (1983) suggest that a
living landscape metaphor is deeply rooted in Andean cosmology and
polity.

Qollahuaya ayllus maintain their territorial integrity and
socioeconomic integration through belief systems that emphasize the
role of human beings as components of anthropomorphized landscapes.
Both living and dead human beings are key agents in maintaining the
well being of these landscapes. The living accomplish this essential
task by adhering to rules about marriage, residence, exchange,
burial, and ritual. People, places, and products are all endowed with
complementary qualities that derive in large part from their origin
in different elevation zones, and all components of the living
landscapes are "nourished" by their associations over time and space
with people, products, and places possessing ecologically
complementary qualities.

It is by means of ritual offerings at ayllu shrines that the
living landscape is nourished. Each such ritual offering involves
products from all of the main ecological zones, as well as the
presence and participation in the ritual of people who are associated
with each of these zones. The largest shrines and the most important
rituals typically occur at intermediate locations on, or near, the
puna-kichwa border.

Burial Ritual. The importance of deceased ancestors and their
mummified or interred remains in household, community, and imperial
ritual is well documented (Allen 1982; Bandelier 1904; C. Mcewan and
Van der Guchte 1992; Salomon 1995; Zuidema 1973, 1977a, 1990). These
sources describe the public veneration of ancestor mummies, public
feasting, and public renewal of burial offerings.

Regional Pilgrimages. Several studies (e.g., Poole 1982, 1991;
Reinhard 1985; Sallnow 1987, 1991; Zuidema and Poole 1982) emphasize
the importance of major ecological junctures (often where principal
puna and kichwa zones border one another) as the loci of regional
pilgrimage shrines. These pilgrimages typically incorporate
multicommunity groupings of puna herders and kichwa cultivators who
interact at these strategic loci to insure continued productivity and
interaction through feasting, dancing, material exchanges, and ritual
offerings.

Ritual Fighting. An extensive literature (e.g., Gorbak et al.
1962; Hopkins 1982; Orlove 1994; Platt 1986; Skar 1982) describes
practices, extending back at least 200 years, of regularly scheduled
intra-community and inter-community ritualized conflicts (tinku).
These feature confrontations between groups of young men armed with
slings, bolas, whips, or clubs, who are supported by groups of women
and older men who perform dances, prepare feasts, and encourage the
fighters. The total number of participants varies from several dozen
to several hundred. Serious injuries and even deaths occur, and there
is some indication that these, and the flow of human blood in
general, are esteemed as signs of future good harvests or successful
animal breeding.

These ritual battles are often competitions between moieties of
dually structured communities. When intra-village moieties are
involved, the individual settlement itself becomes the "stage" for
ritual fighting, and the centrally located cemetery and church
situated on the border between the two divisions are the loci for
fighting, feasting, or avoidance. There are also reports (Hopkins
1982; Platt 1986; Skar 1982) of ritual conflicts between more
distantly linked, multivillage groupings who share common
sociopolitical borders along which ritual fighting occurs.

Duviols (1973) notes a deep-seated distinction in the seventeenth
century between adjacent groups of puna herders ("los lacuaz") and
kichwa cultivators ("los huari") in the Peruvian central highlands.
This dual opposition was manifested in several ways, including
occasional physical violence; marked distinctions in language,
costume, and association with different supernatural forces and
different sacred places; exchange of complementary products; and
bi-ethnic communities.

Of particular interest is Duviols' (1973:175) mention of the
"Danza de Guari-Libiac" ("Danza de Guerra"), an important ceremony in
the integration of potentially hostile groups of herders and
cultivators. This ritual-fighting performance appealed to the
long-standing differences between puna herders and kichwa
cultivators, emphasizing their traditional enmity while providing a
ritualized basis for enduring interaction. The Danza de Guari-Libiac
might be an ancestral form of modern ritual fighting, and perhaps a
descendant of prehispanic forms of ritualized herder-cultivator
interaction.

Structures of duality and tripartition. There is an extensive
literature on Andean structural duality and tripartition at all
organizational levels (e.g., Gow 1978; Harris 1985; Izko 1992; Murra
1968; Netherly 1990, 1993; Paerregaard 1992; Palomino 1971;
Rostworowski 1983; Sallnow 1991; Wachtel 1973). We have already noted
the significance of structural duality in ritual fighting and in the
performance of other integrative Andean ritual. We have also referred
to the differentiation between puna herders and kichwa cultivators in
the conceptualization and definition of this duality. Any formal
distinction between two sectors can create a formally defined border
that may function as a third division. In some cases this becomes the
location where public ritual linking the two sectors is performed at
cemeteries, churches, shrines, processional routes, or feasting
rooms.

[MAY WANT TO EXPAND THIS ABOVE SECTION]

Summary

(1) Herding and agriculture are basic, complementary components of
central Andean highland economy. Neither is complete or sufficient in
isolation.

(2) Herding and agriculture may be combined within a single
household or settlement. However, several factors encourage
specialization and physical separation between puna herders and
kichwa cultivators.

(3) Ideology and ritual play a major role in the integration of
specialized puna herders and kichwa cultivators. Ecological
variability, structural duality and tripartition, and the metaphor of
living landscapes provide the conceptual foundation for this
integrative ritual. The fundamental purposes of ritual performances
are (a) to define and maintain social borders, and (b) to insure
continued productivity of the bordered units and on-going interaction
between them. Moiety borders and the junctures of puna and kichwa
zones stand out as the loci where these rituals are performed.
Rituals include (1) making simple material offerings at modest
shrines, (2) feasting and dancing in association with ancestral tombs
and/or mummies, and (3) engaging in elaborate ritual battles and
pilgrimages.

Overall Summary and Conclusions

[good quote for use in this section -- Guillet
1987:84]

The implications of incorporating higher and lower zones into an
overall [household or local community] production strategy
are that it increases the difficulties of scheduling labor. For
example, in areas where two agricultural zones are exploited,
variation in rates of plant growth and length of rainfall in relation
to altitude produces a separate agricultural calendar for each
vegetation zone. The problems of integrating an agricultural with a
pastoral calendar are even greater. As a result, conflicting demands
on household time and labor and the necessity for continuous vertical
movement create an extremely complex scheduling problem. These
disjunctions become a serious obstacle to the intensification of
agro-pastoral production [in the context of household or local
community management].

[Another useful quote for this section, McCorkle
1987:72-73], for communities in southern Peru that combine kichwa
agriculture and puna herding

access to labor may be more problematic than access to land.
Grazing lands [in the puna] are communally held and freely
available. However, their location vis-a-vis agricultural workplaces
often engenders spatial and ... labor disjunctions between
cultivation and herding for the peasant household.

Some of these disjunctions can be offset by choice of pasturing
regime, at least partially or seasonally. Beyond this, certain
socio-organizational strategies may be called into play. Predictably
enough, most strategies involve aggregating animals and dividing up
daily herding duties across two or more households. In other words
... households must forego their 'ideal' of productive autarchy and
seek assistance beyond the 'domestic mode of production' ... in the
... 'supra-household' sphere.

Although villagers' small-scale pastoral associations are designed
to combat dialectical disjunctions, they do so only imperfectly, even
in Usinos' [name of local community] eyes....They are usually
quite costly, not only materially, but also socially....they open the
way to serious intercine conflict over animals and their care -- due
to the informal, dyadic nature of these contracts. Indeed, village
pastoral associations not infrequently collapse from such conflict,
leaving bitter feelings that may ripple distrust and factionalism
through the entire community, and may last for generations.

[suggestive of need to supra-community level of resolution --
leads directly into my argument for Junin]

[Another good quote, for this section or maybe elsewhere:
Morris 1978:20] M. states that his discussion of exchange "brings
us at once to what may well be the single most interesting and
difficult question in Andean studies: What constitutes the
community?"

[JRP: Answer=there are many communities, at many different
levels; e.g., ayllu/calpulli -- confusion in terminology comes from
fact that these terms refer to "communities" at different
organizational levels]

[Think about: how does inter-zonal, inter-regional operate in
absence of over-arching system that maintains some degree of security
and peace? I.e., pre-state, or non-state contexts]

TABLES

Table 4.01. Common foods for puna herders in southern Peru.

Table 4.02. Composition of mixed alpaca-llama-sheep herds in the
South Andean puna.